and moral purpose nothing.  A battleship may be taken as the concrete embodiment of this view.  When we read, say, of some new poison-gas by means of which one bomb from an aeroplane can exterminate a whole town, we have a thrill of what we fondly believe to be horror, but it is really delight in scientific skill.  Science is our god; we say to it, “Though thou slay me, yet will I trust in thee.”  And so it slays us.  The Chinese have not this defect, but they have the opposite one, of believing that good intentions are the only thing really necessary.  I will give an illustration.  Forsythe Sherfesee, Forestry Adviser to the Chinese Government, gave an address at the British Legation in January 1919 on “Some National Aspects of Forestry in China."[37] In this address he proves (so far as a person ignorant of forestry can judge) that large parts of China which now lie waste are suitable for forestry, that the importation of timber (e.g. for railway sleepers) which now takes place is wholly unnecessary, and that the floods which often sweep away whole districts would be largely prevented if the slopes of the mountains from which the rivers come were reafforested.  Yet it is often difficult to interest even the most reforming Chinese in afforestation, because it is not an easy subject for ethical enthusiasm.  Trees are planted round graves, because Confucius said they should be; if Confucianism dies out, even these will be cut down.  But public-spirited Chinese students learn political theory as it is taught in our universities, and despise such humble questions as the utility of trees.  After learning all about (say) the proper relations of the two Houses of Parliament, they go home to find that some Tuchun has dismissed both Houses, and is governing in a fashion not considered in our text-books.  Our theories of politics are only true in the West (if there); our theories of forestry are equally true everywhere.  Yet it is our theories of politics that Chinese students are most eager to learn.  Similarly the practical study of industrial processes might be very useful, but the Chinese prefer the study of our theoretical economics, which is hardly applicable except where industry is already developed.  In all these respects, however, there is beginning to be a marked improvement.

It is science that makes the difference between our intellectual outlook and that of the Chinese intelligentsia.  The Chinese, even the most modern, look to the white nations, especially America, for moral maxims to replace those of Confucius.  They have not yet grasped that men’s morals in the mass are the same everywhere:  they do as much harm as they dare, and as much good as they must.  In so far as there is a difference of morals between us and the Chinese, we differ for the worse, because we are more energetic, and can therefore commit more crimes per diem.  What we have to teach the Chinese is not morals, or ethical maxims about government, but science and technical skill.  The real problem for the Chinese intellectuals is to acquire Western knowledge without acquiring the mechanistic outlook.