and are responsible for much of the improvidence of the people, as their rapacity makes prosperity and providence almost impossible, since any effort at accumulation only tempts the officials to prey upon those who have the good fortune to lay up anything in store.1

In India the evils of mendicancy prevail. The poverty is extreme, and with it there is much improvidence and recklessness as to debt. Costly and exacting social customs are responsible for the impoverishment of many families, especially the expenses connected with marriages. and burials. The economic problems of India are truly formidable. Debt, thriftlessness, and the prevalent poverty make the social condition of the people pitiable, and any hopeful reform or economic expedients which would help India to wiser methods of living would be an unspeakable benefit.

In the countries of South America there is a blight of indolence and thriftlessness which sadly depresses social prosperity. An infusion of energy, foresight, and industrial aspirations would be of the highest economic value to all South American peoples. The idler and the drone are there, as elsewhere, an injury and a bane to society.

Pride and vanity are barriers to progress.

8. EXCESSIVE PRIDE AND SELF-EXALTATION.-Inordinate selfesteem in the individual affects society when it becomes a barrier to the entrance of new and progressive ideas from without. Vanity, conceit, and self-worship may so prejudice the mind that it becomes blind to better things, and shuts itself up in its own provincial ignorance, refusing all help and inspiration from other sources. Progress becomes impossible. Rigid conservatism hardens into stupid contentment with things as they are. Conceit and self-complacency bar the path of improvement. The modern world is viewed with contempt, and all outside the little environment of primitive life which surrounds the victim of his own foolish pride is viewed with suspicion and disdain. This pitiable exaltation of ignorance may be intellectual and spiritual, shutting out the light of truth, or it may be social and material, rejecting the facilities and discoveries of the modern world. In either case it is an incalculable injury to society. It retards and arrests social development, and postpones indefinitely the entrance of nobler and larger life.

Every Asiatic nation suffers more or less from this consciousness of its own superiority, although the energy and push of modern enterprise

1 The Missionary, October, 1894, p. 411.

and the growing influence of missionary education are rapidly breaking down prejudice and letting in the light of wiser methods and larger knowledge. Of all Asiatic nations the Chinese are conspicuous for stolid conservatism and inflated pride. They belong to the "Middle Kingdom," and the outside world of barbarism lies around them as the centre. Everything outside of China is inferior, and all foreigners or foreign ideas are looked upon with contempt and hatred. One of the chief functions of the Chinese is to humiliate the rest of the world and teach it useful lessons of its own insignificance.2

In Japan this trait reveals itself rather in national vanity and intellectual conceit. There is some excuse, however, for Japan's self-consciousness. She is in marked and favorable contrast with China in her readiness to recognize the progress of more enlightened nations and avail herself of every benefit which the genius of the Occident has provided. Her great danger is that intellectual pride and moral hauteur will deprive her fair land of the uplifting influences of Christian enlightenment. Much, however, will be said elsewhere to encourage the hope that the Japanese will resist this tendency to intellectual arrogance, and welcome the nobler teachings of Christianity.

Korea has shut herself up in the seclusion of ignorance for centuries, and only recently, through the force of circumstances, has the spell of her isolation been broken. Her upper classes and literati are steeped in pride, while the lower classes are still blinded with prejudice.

In Siam the spirit of Oriental self-complacency greatly retards the development of the nation, although the influence of an enlightened and liberal king is doing much to encourage larger aspirations among his people.

India is the camping-ground of Brahmanic pride, the very acme of supercilious conceit, and presents also notable illustrations of that absurd self-exaltation of the so-called devotees and holy men of Hinduism. The whole tendency of Hinduism is to stimulate self-esteem, while caste is a bulwark of pride in its most sublime proportions. The subtle speculations of Hindu religious thought have given a fascination to philosophical themes, and have developed intellectual conceit to an extraordinary degree. The Hindu religionist is pride incarnate, while the shadow of a Brahman is a natural phenomenon more impressive than a sunrise. The Mohammedan is a noted rival of the Hindu in religious and intellectual pride. No more striking exhibition of the paralyzing effect of the haughty spirit of Islam can be found than the social and 1 Henry, "The Cross and the Dragon," p. 33.

2 Coltman, "The Chinese: Medical, Political, and Social," p. 81.

intellectual condition of the lands dominated by the Moslem. The Turkish Empire, Persia, the North African countries, and Arabia are samples of lands where pride rules with blighting sway.

The African, as a rule, may be said to be vain and conceited in proportion to the density of his ignorance. If we take the Matabele as a sample, we can hardly find his equal for overweening pride and self-importance.1 The result has been manifest in thirty years of stagnation even under the influence of faithful missionary effort. The conquest of the nation by British arms, when permanently accomplished, will be a blessing, and no doubt beat down those hitherto impenetrable barriers which pride has erected. The pitiable condition of the proud savages of the earth is owing in some measure to their intense satisfaction with their own fancied superiority, and is a telling lesson of the social perils of pride. A religion which would teach to these nations the true exaltation of humility-its beauty, its nobility, and its gentle charm-would be a helpful blessing to the soul itself and to all its social environment.

9. MORAL DELINQUENCIES.—A terrible and pitiable count must be made under this head against the entire non-Christian world. The very foundations of social integrity and prosperity are

untruthfulness and dishonesty.

shaken by such vices as untruthfulness and dis- The blighting effects of honesty. Truthfulness is a prime essential to mutual confidence, and honesty is a fundamental condition of just and fair intercourse. Where society is permeated with a spirit of deceit and knavery, where a lie is a commonplace and cheating is resorted to without compunction, all moral health and stability seem to have been destroyed. A lie will be met by a lie. Deceit will overreach deceit. Cheating will be matched by cheating; and all the arts of dishonesty will be excelled by some fresh ingenuity in fraud.

As the status of non-Christian nations in respect to these moral qualities is studied, one is tempted to say, not in haste, but with calm deliberation, "All men are liars." That there are individual exceptions is happily true, but as a rule the world of heathenism lieth in the wickedness of deceit and dishonesty. Little can be said of any one nation in favorable contrast with others. Each in turn seems to pose as an expert in the guilty arts of deception.

Among the Japanese lying is a sadly common fault of daily life. 1 Carnegie, "Among the Matabele," pp. 18, 68.

2 The Chronicle, December, 1893, p. 307.