record of any books that have exacted such supreme reverence in any nation as the works of Confucius, except the Koran of the Mohammedans, the Book of the Law among the Hebrews, and the Bible among Christians. What an influence for one man to have exerted on subsequent ages, who laid no claim to divinity or even originality-recognized as a man, worshipped as a god!"*

When Che-Hwang-te, or Hoang-ti, the only progressive emperor China ever had (221 B. C.), realized that the Confucian classics hindered his reforms, he buried their champions alive and ordered the books to be destroyed. Reverence for these books caused loving hearts to find hiding-places for them, and when the king died the books were brought out of their hidingplaces, but it was not until the accession of the Han dynasty, 206 B. C., that the reigning emperor collected the scattered writings of the sage and exerted his vast power to secure the study of them throughout the schools of China.

CHINESE SCHOOLS

For centuries before and after Confucius primary education was highly esteemed, and practically universal. And there were higher institutions of learning.

Primary Schools.-The Chinese made no formal provisions for the education of girls. The boys began to go to school at the age of six or seven. Reading as the key to the classics was the subject par excellence. Writing, arithmetic, and such human relations as obedience, justice, and mercy were added to the course. * Lord's "Beacon Lights of History."

There were no schoolhouses in the modern sense of the term. The school was kept in the house of the teacher or other convenient place. The pupils studied out loud, repeating the teacher's statements. The main purpose was to memorize, not to think. The Chinese language is ideographic rather than alphabetic. More than fifty thousand words or signs are employed, but they are not related by declension, comparison, or inflection. At least five thousand of these characters must be mastered in order to read well. It is not a wonder, therefore, that the great majority of Chinese boys left school very young, and that they were somewhat disobedient in their school tasks. Inasmuch as disobedience at school was serious to the whole scheme of Chinese ancestral reverence it was sufficient cause for severe punishments, among them castigation, starvation, and imprisonment.

Higher Institutions.-The value which Chinese ancestral consciousness placed upon such human relations as obedience to parents and rulers, social justice and personal righteousness made something like college courses preparing for leadership in the higher vocations simply indispensable. Talented young men would attach themselves to masters, and spend years in preparing for a series of competitive examinations, the fourth and last of which was to be held at Pekin. Among the courses offered, as the Confucian classics show, were music, poetry, history, ethics, politics, medicine, astronomy, and mathematics. All the examinations were strictly competitive. The prospect of lucrative imperial service acted as a powerful stimulus. Thousands of candidates presented themselves at intervals of three years. The examinations were written, and

lasted for days. The candidates were supplied with the necessary writing materials and worked in isolated cells or apartments, strictly guarded. Those who failed might try again. The successful candidates who failed to secure government positions, took up such other vocations as their ancestral course of studies made possible.

Estimate.-The fitness of means to ends in view in the Chinese system of education is very evident. But the perfection of human relations at which the system aimed is just as evidently impossible, apart from profound religious consciousness-and this was lamentably absent from the Chinese ancestral scheme even after Confucian reformation had occurred, for while Confucius recognized the existence of a God, he said almost nothing about religion. The Chinese mind failed to realize that direct relation of the soul to a personal God is, as psychology shows, the only final guarantee of spiritual morality. While, therefore, we recognize what an opportunity Chinese higher education was for talented men, and that the commitment of their institutional life to these talented men made for institutional contentment, we must pronounce the system, what it has proved itself nationally, a tragic human failure.

REFERENCES

1. Lord's "Beacon Lights of History."

2. Graves' "History of Education Before the Middle Ages."

QUESTIONS

1. Who are the Chinese? Account for their non-progressiveWhat accordingly was the Chinese ancestral ideal?

ness.

2. Who was Confucius? Consider Confucius "in the making." Give an account of his career as a teacher, and his work as a writer. Compare him with other famous personalities.

3. Explain the perils to which Che-Hwang-te subjected Confucianism, and how it became the dominating influence of subsequent centuries.

4. Visit a Chinese primary school. Explain the importance of reading in the school curriculum. Why so difficult? What were the results? Why was disobedience more serious than with us?

5. What were the ends in view in Chinese higher education? Consider the curriculum as means to ends. Discuss the whole system of competitive examinations.

6. What were some of the evident merits of the Chinese system of education? What are the verdicts of psychology and history?

CHAPTER III

EDUCATION OF THE ANCIENT HINDUS

THE HINDUS

About 2000 B. C. hardy, warlike Aryans from the table-lands of central Asia began to press through the passes of the Himalayas into the valleys of the Indus and Ganges Rivers. These invaders are known to us as Hindus. In time they conquered the non-Aryans, who had occupied the country before them. Those non-Aryans who refused to submit to the Aryan conquerors took to the mountains, and are known as the "Hill Tribes" to-day. The inevitable commingling of conquered and conqueror produced the mass of the population of present India. This Aryan migration had two far-reaching results, namely, loss of racevigor, and social inequalities.

Loss of Vigor.-The luxury and leisure which succeeded the conquest of India with her wealth and softness of climate changed a rugged and warlike race into a pacific and contemplative race. This explains why the Hindu conquerors were subsequently conquered themselves, first by Alexander the Great, 327 B. C., then by the Mohammedans in the tenth century of the Christian era, by the Mongols in the thirteenth, and last of all by the English, to whom India gave a new empire of two hundred million souls.

Castes of India.-The Aryan conquest of non-Aryan India, had a second far-reaching result, namely, a