a

and nation. It might with equal force be said that the attitude of the tribe or nation toward its young is also a barometer of progress. Behind the harsh measure and savage customs, underneath the cruelty and at times ferocious indifference to pain, there is in general among the lowest of the tribes an affection for their young, once it has been decided that they are allowed to live.

In that too frequently suppressed affection, stunted as it is by customary law and the unequal struggle with nature, there is the beginning of humanitarian progress.

Given reasonable security that there will be a sufficiency of food supply and a surcease of neighbourhood wars, this affection will pass from precept to concept and protect even the unborn.'

“No people in the world are so fond of, or so long-suffering with, children," Stevenson says of the same South Sea Islanders among whom he has just said infanticide is common. But even after it has been decided to bring up the child, and it has become an object of great affection, it is still in danger should famine conditions seem imminent, 3 or should the cupidity and avarice of the parents be aroused, with the consequence that children are readily sold into slavery.

Sir John Lubbock, The Origin of Civilization, p. 3. Stevenson, In the South Seas, p. 38. 3 Lucien Young, U. S. N., The Real Hawaii, p. 78.

* John Foreman, The Philippine Islands, p. 206. Worcester, The Philippine Islands, p. 208.

Dean C.

South Sea Island Customs

45

Nature's methods are stern, and her progress slow; despite perplexing examples of reactionary forces, the primitive move is steadily toward an understanding of one's duties as a human beingor he dies. For the civilized man, pain is nature's warning that he has violated the rules of his own body, and for the primitive man, decay and despair are the warnings that the path of progress lies the other way.

Looking over this vast field, including not only blacks, Mongols, and Indians, but even the Europeans, as we shall come to see later, we gather that those that have struggled upward have been only those who have taken nature's lesson of lessons to themselves. Horrible as is the story of these stationary and degenerate peoples that we get, what must be the whole story, with its full picture of anguish?

CHAPTER IV

THE DROWNING OF DAUGHTERS-EARLY MONGOLIAN

CIVILIZATION MARKED BY ANCESTOR WORSHIP-
SEVERE CHARACTER OF CONFUCIUS—"BEGINNING”
OF INFANTICIDE, 200 B.C. -REFORMS OF THE
EMPEROR CHOENTCHE AND THE MANCHUS IN THE
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY-DECREES REDUCING
THE COST OF WEDDING GIFTS IN ORDER TO STOP
PARENTS FROM KILLING FEMALE CHILDREN

A

SSUMING that the human cradle was in the

Eastern Archipelago, and more particu

larly in the Island of Java where Dr. Dubois discovered his Pithecanthropus erectus, the primeval home of the Mongolian division of the human race was the Tibetan plateau. From this central plateau the early Mongol groups spread during the Stone Age over the Asiatic continent, in one place developing into the Akkado-Sumerians of Babylonia, the almost extinct Hyperboreans of Siberia in another, the Mongolo-Tartars stretching across Central Asia from Japan to Europe, the Tibeto-Indo-Chinese of Tibet, Indo-China, and China, and the Oceanic Mongols of Malaysia, Madagascar, and the Philippines.

In Tibet even today, polyandrous customs are

Writings of Confucius

47

still strong and the nomadic tendencies of the people show that the years of civilization or nearcivilization have not changed the primitive roving inclinations, inclinations that partly account for the indifference to child life among the Chinese.

Our knowledge of ancient China rests principally on two authorities, the Chou King of Confucius, written 484 B.C., and the Sse Ki of Tsse Ma Thsein, written at the beginning of the first era before Christ. Confucius was not able to go further back than seventeen centuries before his own time, so that we can safely say that we know something about Chinese history for about 2200 years before the Christian era. The social and political life of the Chinese people in the time of Yao, the first of the emperors named by Confucius, was that of a pastoral people, but even then most of the useful arts had been invented, writing was already known, and the first notions of astronomy on which they founded their calendar had been acquired. The successor of Yao was Chun, and after Chun came Hia, the founder of a dynasty which lasted from 2205 to 1767 B.C., with which dynasty began the real history of China.

When Confucius appeared the Chinese Empire was a highly civilized nation, but of Confucius it has been said that he, more than any other one man, went to make China a nation. Born at a time when his country was torn with discord and desolated by war, husbandry neglected, peace of households destroyed, and plunder and rapine common occurrences, Confucius was nineteen when he married and added to the national woes his own domestic troubles, divorcing the lady after a brief period in captivity, but not however until she had borne him a son.

It is through this son that we learn something of the personal character of Confucius. An inquisitive disciple asked the son if he had learned any more than those who were not related to the great teacher.

"No," replied Le. “He was standing alone once when I was passing through the court below with hasty steps, and said to me: “Have you read the Odes?'

' “On my replying, 'Not yet,' he added:

“If you do not learn the Odes, you will not be fit to converse with.'

“Another day in the same way and the same place, he said to me:

“Have you read the rules of Propriety?' “On my replying ‘Not yet,' he added:

“ 'If you do not learn the rules of Propriety, your character cannot be established.'"

“I asked one thing," said the enthusiastic disciple, "and I have learned three things. I have learned about the Odes, I have learned about the rules of Propriety, and I have learned that the Superior Man maintains a distant reserve toward his son."

In this anecdote--and in his works-it is evident that Confucius had the Chinese estimate of