Our Oriental Heritage

by Will Durant

  In this paradise of the male the secondary wives were practically slaves, and the chief wife was merely the head of a reproductive establishment. Her prestige depended almost entirely on the number and sex of her children. Educated to accept her husband as a lord, she might win some modest happiness by falling quietly into the routine expected of her; and so adaptive is the human soul that the wife and husband, in these prearranged unions, seem to have lived in a peace no more violent than that which follows the happy endings of Western romantic love. The woman could be divorced for almost any cause, from barrenness to loquacity;112 she herself could never divorce her husband, but she might leave him and return to her parents—though this was a matter of rare resort. Divorce in any case was infrequent; partly because the lot of the divorced woman was too unpleasant to be thought of, partly because the Chinese were natural philosophers, and took suffering as the order of the day.

  Very probably, in pre-Confucian times, the family had centered around the mother as the source of its existence and its authority. In the earliest period, as we have seen, the people “knew their mothers but not their fathers”; and the character for a man’s family name is still formed from the radical for “woman.”113 The word for “wife” meant “equal”; and the wife preserved her own name after marriage. As late as the third century of our era women held high administrative and executive positions in China, even to ruling the state;114 the “Dowager Empress” merely followed in the steps of that Empress Lu who ruled China so severely from 195 to 180 B.C. Lu, “hard and inflexible,” killed and poisoned her rivals and enemies with all the gusto of a Medicean; she chose and deposed kings, and had her husband’s favorite concubine shorn of ears and eyes and thrown into a latrine.115 Though hardly one in ten thousand Chinese were literate under the Manchus,116 education was customary among the women of the upper classes in ancient days; many of them wrote poetry; and Pan Chao, the gifted sister of the historian P’an Ku (ca. 100 A.D.), completed his history after his death, and won high recognition from the emperor.117

  Probably the establishment of the feudal system in China reduced the political and economic status of woman, and brought with it an especially rigorous form of the patriarchal family. Usually all the male descendants, and their wives and children, lived with the oldest male; and though the family owned its land in common, it acknowledged the complete authority of the patriarch over both the family and its property. By the time of Confucius the power of the father was almost absolute: he could sell his wife or his children into servitude, though he did so only under great need; and if he wished he could put his children to death with no other restraint than public opinion.118 He ate his meals alone, not inviting either his wife or his children to table with him except on rare occasions. When he died his widow was expected to avoid remarriage; formerly she had been required to commit suttee in his honor, and cases of this occurred in China to the end of the nineteenth century.119 He was courteous to his wife, as to everybody, but he maintained a severe distance, almost a separation of caste, between himself and his wife and children. The women lived in distinct quarters of the home, and seldom mingled with the men; social life was exclusively male, except for promiscuous women. The man thought of his wife as the mother of his children; he honored her not for her beauty or her culture, but for her fertility, her industry and her obedience. In a celebrated treatise the Lady Pan Ho-pan, from the same elevation of aristocracy, wrote with edifying humility of the proper condition of women:

  We occupy the last place in the human species, we are the weaker part of humanity; the basest functions are, and should be, our portion. . . . Rightly and justly does the Book of the Laws of the Sexes make use of these words: “If a woman has a husband after her own heart, it is for her whole life; if a woman has a husband against her heart, it is also for life.”120

  And Fu Hsüan sang:

  How sad it is to be a woman!

  Nothing on earth is held so cheap.

  Boys stand leaning at the door

  Like gods fallen out of heaven.

  Their hearts brave the Four Oceans,

  The wind and dust of a thousand miles.

  No one is glad when a girl is born:

  By her the family sets no store.

  When she grows up she hides in her room,

  Afraid to look a man in the face.

  No one cries when she leaves her home-

  Sudden as clouds when the rain stops.

  She bows her head and composes her face,

  Her teeth are pressed on her red lips:

  She bows and kneels countless times.121

  Perhaps such quotations do injustice to the Chinese home. There was rank subjection in it, and quarrels were frequent between man and woman, and among the children; but there were also much kindness and affection, much mutual helpfulness, and constant cooperation in the busy functioning of a natural home. Though economically subordinate the woman enjoyed the franchise of the tongue, and might scold her man into fright or flight in the best Occidental style. The patriarchal family could not be democratic, much less egalitarian, because the state left to the family the task of maintaining social order; the home was at once a nursery, a school, a workshop and a government. The relaxation of family discipline in America has been made possible only by the economic unimportance of the urban home, and the appropriation of family functions by the school, the factory and the state.

  The type of character produced by these domestic institutions has won the highest praise of many travelers. Allowing for the many exceptions that weaken every social generalization, the average Chinese was a model of filial obedience and devotion, of wholesome respect and willing care for the old.* He accepted patiently the character-forming precepts of the Li-chi or Book of Ceremonies, carried easily its heavy burden of etiquette, regulated every phase of his life with its rules of passionless courtesy, and acquired under it an ease and excellence of manners, a poise and dignity of bearing, unknown to his compeers of the West—so that a coolie carrying dung through the streets might show better breeding, and more self-respect, than the alien merchant who sold him opium. The Chinese learned the art of compromise, and graciously “saved the face” of his worsted enemy. He was occasionally violent in speech and always loquacious, often unclean and not invariably sober, given to gambling and gluttony,* to petty peculation and courteous mendacity;124 he worshiped the God of Wealth with too frank an idolatry,125 and was as hungry for gold as a caricatured American; he was capable occasionally of cruelty and brutality, and accumulating injustices sometimes provoked him to mass outbreaks of pillage and slaughter. But in nearly all cases he was peaceable and kindly, ready to help his neighbors, disdainful of criminals and warriors, thrifty and industrious, leisurely but steady at his work, simple and unassuming in his mode of life, and comparatively honest in commerce and finance. He was silent and patient under the whip of adversity, and took good and evil fortune alike with a wise humility; he bore bereavement and agony with fatalistic self-control, and showed little sympathy for those who suffered them audibly; he mourned long and loyally for his departed relatives, and (when all his compromises had failed to elude it) faced his own death with philosophic calm. He was as sensitive to beauty as he was insensitive to pain; he brightened his cities with colorful decoration, and adorned his life with the maturest art.

  If we wish to understand this civilization we must forget for a moment the bitter chaos and helplessness into which it has been thrown by its own internal weakness and by contact with the superior guns and machines of the West; we must see it at any of its many apogees—under the Chou princes, or Ming Huang, or Hui Tsung, or K’ang-hsi. For in those quiet and beauty-loving days the Chinese represented without doubt the highest civilization and the ripest culture that Asia, or perhaps any continent, had yet achieved.

  VI. A GOVERNMENT PRAISED BY VOLTAIRE126

  The submergence of the individual—Self-government—The village and the province—The laxity of the law—The severity of pun
ishment—The Emperor—The Censor—Administrative boards—Education for public office—Nomination by education—The examination system—Its defects—Its virtues

  The most impressive aspect of this civilization was its system of government. If the ideal state is a combination of democracy and aristocracy, the Chinese have had it for more than a thousand years; if the best government is that which governs least, then the Chinese have had the best. Never has a government governed so many people, or governed them so little, or so long.

  Not that individualism, or individual liberty, flourished in China; on the contrary, the concept of the individual was weak, and lost him in the groups to which he belonged. He was, first of all, a member of a family and a passing unit in a stream of life between his ancestors and his posterity; by law and custom he was responsible for the acts of the others of his household, and they were responsible for his. Usually he belonged to some secret society, and, in the town, to a guild; these limited his rights to do as he pleased. A web of ancient custom bound him, and a powerful public opinion threatened him with ostracism if he seriously violated the morals or traditions of the group. It was precisely the strength of these popular organizations, rising naturally out of the needs and voluntary cooperation of the people, that made it possible for China to maintain itself in order and stability despite the weakness of law and the state.

  But within the framework of these spontaneous institutions of self-government the Chinese remained politically and economically free. The great distances that separated one city from another, and all of them from the imperial capital, the dividing effect of mountains, deserts, and unbridged or unnavigable streams, the lack of transport and quick communication, and the difficulty of supporting an army large enough to enforce some central will upon four hundred million people, compelled the state to leave to each district an almost complete autonomy.

  The unit of local administration was the village, loosely ruled by the family heads under the eye of a “headman” named by the government; a group of villages gathered about a town constituted a hien, or county, of which there were some thirteen hundred in China; two or more hien, ruled together from a city, constituted a fu; two or more fu formed a tao, or circuit; two or more tao made a sheng, or province; and eighteen provinces, under the Manchus, made the empire. The state appointed a magistrate to act as administrator, tax-collector and judge in each hien; a chief officer for each fu and each tao; and a judge, a treasurer, a governor, and sometimes a viceroy, for each province.127 But these officials normally contented themselves with collecting taxes and “squeezes,” judging such cases as voluntary arbitration had failed to settle, and, for the rest, leaving the maintenance of order to custom, the family, the clan and the guild. Each province was a semi-independent state, free from imperial interference or central legislation so long as it paid its tax-allotment and kept the peace. Lack of facilities for communication made the central government more an idea than a reality. The patriotic emotions of the people were spent upon their districts and provinces, and seldom extended to the empire as a whole.

  In this loose structure law was weak, unpopular, and diverse. The people preferred to be ruled by custom, and to settle their disputes by face-saving compromises out of court. They expressed their view of litigation by such pithy proverbs as “Sue a flea and catch a bite,” or “Win your lawsuit, lose your money.” In many towns of several thousand population years passed without a case coming into the courts.128 The laws had been codified under the T’ang emperors, but they dealt almost entirely with crime, and attempted no formulation of a civil code. Trials were simple, for no lawyer was allowed to argue a case in court, though licensed notaries might occasionally prepare, and read to the magistrate, a statement in behalf of a client.129 There were no juries, and there was scant protection in the law against the sudden seizure and secret retention of a person by the officers of the state. Suspects were finger-printed,130 and confessions were sometimes elicited by tortures slightly more physical than those now used for such purposes in the most enlightened cities. Punishment was severe, but hardly as barbarous as in most other countries of Asia; it began with cutting off the hair, and went on to flogging, banishment or death; if the criminal had exceptional merits or rank, he might be allowed to kill himself.131 There were generous commutations of sentences, and capital punishment could in normal times be imposed only by the emperor. Theoretically, as with us, all persons were equal before the law. These laws never availed to prevent brigandage on the highways or corruption in office and the courts, but they coöperated modestly with custom and the family to give China a degree of social order and personal security not equaled by any other nation before our century.132

  Poised precariously above these teeming millions sat the emperor. In theory he ruled by divine right; he was the “Son of Heaven,” and represented the Supreme Being on earth.* By virtue of his godlike powers he ruled the seasons and commanded men to coordinate their lives with the divine order of the universe. His decrees were laws, and his judgments were the final court; he administered the state and was the head of its religion; he appointed all officials, examined the highest contestants for office, and chose his successor to the throne. Actually his powers were wholesomely limited by custom and law. He was expected to rule without contravening the regulations that had come down from the sacred past; he might at any moment be rebuked by a strange dignitary known as the Censor; he was in effect imprisoned by a ring of counsellors and commissioners whose advice it was usually expedient for him to accept; and if he ruled very unjustly or unwell he lost, by common custom and consent, the “mandate of Heaven,” and might be violently deposed without offense to religion or morality.

  The Censor was head of a board whose function it was to inspect all officials in the administration of their duties; and the emperor was not exempt from this supervision. Several times in the course of history the Censor has reproved the emperor himself. For example, the Censor Sung respectfully suggested to the Emperor Chia Ch’ing (1796-1821 A.D.) a moderation in his attachment to actors and strong drink. Chia Ch’ing summoned Sung to his presence, and angrily asked him what punishment was proper for so insolent an official. Sung answered, “Death by the slicing process.” Ordered to select a milder penalty, he answered, “Let me be beheaded.” Ordered to select a milder penalty, he recommended that he be strangled. The Emperor, impressed by his courage and disturbed by his propinquity, made him governor of the province of Ili.134

  The imperial government had come to be a highly complex administrative machine. Nearest to the throne was the Grand Council, composed of four “Great Ministers,” usually headed by a prince of the royal blood; by custom it met daily, in the early hours of the morning, to determine the policies of the state. Superior in rank but inferior in influence was another group of advisers called the “Inner Cabinet.” The work of administration was headed by “Six Boards”: of Civil Office, of Revenue, of Ceremonies, of War, of Punishments, and of Works. There was a Colonial Office, for managing such distant territories as Mongolia, Sinkiang and Tibet; but there was no Foreign Office: China recognized no other nations as its equals, and made no provisions for dealing with them beyond arrangements for the reception of tribute-bearing embassies.

  The weakness of the government lay in its limited revenues, its inadequate defenses, and its rejection of any instructive intercourse with the outside world. It taxed the land, monopolized the sale of salt, and impeded the development of commerce by levying, after 1852, a duty on the transit of goods along the main routes of the country; but the poverty of the people, the difficulty of collection, and the dishonesty of the collectors kept the national revenue at too low a point to finance the naval and military forces that might have saved China from invasion and shameful defeat.* Perhaps the basic defect was in the personnel of the government; the ability and honesty of its officials deteriorated throughout the nineteenth century, and left the nation essentially leaderless when half the wealth and power of the world were jo
ining in an assault upon its independence, its resources and its institutions.

  Nevertheless those officials had been chosen by the most unique, and all in all the most admirable, method ever developed for the selection of public servants. It was a method that would have interested Plato; and despite its failure and abandonment today it still endears China to the philosopher. Theoretically, the plan provided a perfect reconciliation of aristocracy and democracy: all men were to have an equal opportunity to make themselves fit for office, but office was to be open only to those who had made themselves fit. Practically, the method produced good results for a thousand years.

  It began in the village schools—simple private institutions, often no more than a room in a cottage—where an individual teacher, out of his own meager remuneration, provided an elementary education for the sons of the prosperous; the poorer half of the population remained illiterate.137 These schools were not financed by the state, nor were they conducted by the clergy; education, like marriage, remained, in China, independent of religion, except in so far as Confucianism was its creed. Hours were long and discipline was severe in these modest schoolhouses: the children reported to the teacher at sunrise, studied with him till ten, had breakfast, resumed their studies till five, and then were free for the day. Vacations were few and brief: there were no lessons after noon in the summer, but to atone for this leisure to work in the fields there were school sessions in the winter evenings. The chief instruments of instruction were the writings of Confucius, the poetry of the T’ang, and a whip of clinging bamboo. The method was memory: day after day the young students learned by heart, and discussed with their teacher, the philosophy of K’ung the Master, until almost every word of it had sunk into their memories, and some of it into their hearts; China hoped that in this joyless and merciless way even a peasant lad might be turned into a philosopher and a gentleman. The graduate emerged with little information and much understanding, factually ignorant and mentally mature.*