CHAPTER III - SOLIDARITY, CO-OPERATION, AND IMPERIAL FEDERATION

Summary

Possibly that state of society in which the individual is the unit is a more advanced form of civilisation; but it is impossible to understand China unless it be first realised that the individual life is nothing there, and that the family is the unit; and yet further, that no one stands alone in China, as is so painfully the case in England, but that every one is responsible for some one else, guaranteed by some one else. And here, to those who wish to read a really exact, circumstantial account of the Chinese and their ways, let me recommend John Chinaman, by the Rev. George Cockburn, quite the best book I have read on the subject, and one that deserves a wider circulation than it has attained, being written in terse, epigrammatic English, with a flavour of Tacitus about it. Alas! the writer is no more,—a silent, reserved, black-browed Scotchman, with a fervour of missionary zeal glowing under a most impassive exterior. The riot, in which all our own worldly goods in China were destroyed, wrecked for ever the nervous system of his strong, handsome, brave young wife.