No civilisation was ever more original, more isolated
or more precocious. After having passed through the
Stone Age, to which the words cJd-fao, chi-tsien, chi-
kien, chi-jin, chi-fou, " knife, point, sword, tool, axe, of
stone," still testify, the Age of Bronze, then of Iron,
they have become for ever fixed in the same morality,
the same devotion to ancestors and genii. Centuries
have passed, and neither the intrusion of Buddhism
and Islam, nor the Mongol devastations, neither the
Manchu revolution nor the violent and successful in-
cursions of modern days, have appreciably modified the
manners and the genius of China. To a passably
educated Chinaman, the Barbarian world is veiled- in
a mist, in which a few and soon effaced outlines can
barely be distinguished ; and when, at rare intervals,
a baud of priests or of soldiers comes to convince him



78 Distribution of Languages and Races.
of the existence of that non-ego which is called France,
England, or Germany, he attaches no more importance
to it than the field-labourer to a passing hail-shower.
Even those who have visited our lands retain as the
impression of our civilisation only a vague wonder and
a more definite mistrust.
China herself, in the same way, in spite of the
commercial relations between the Romans and the
Seri, in spite of the narratives of the Arabs and of
Marco Polo, notwithstanding wars, journeys, and scien-
tific expeditions, China is for Western Asia and Europe
merely a confused mass iu whjch can be distinguished
for a moment, only to be lost again iu the oblivion of
indifference, the names of a few Emperors and philoso-
phers, scattered over an ocean of four thousand years.
