THE WILL IN NATURE.
but words: they even pique themselves on the achievement and accordingly talk about Acosmism, the wags! But I would humbly suggest leaving their meanings to words in short, calling the world, the world; and gods, gods.
In their endeavours to acquire knowledge of the state of Religion in China, Europeans began as usual, and as the Greeks and Romans under similar circumstances had done, by first searching for points of contact with their own belief. Now as, in their own way of thinking, the conceptions of Religion and of Theism were almost identified, or at any rate had grown together so closely, that they could only be separated with great difficulty; as moreover, till a more accurate knowledge of Asia had reached Europe, the very erroneous opinion had been disseminated for the purpose of argument e consensu gentium [from the agreement of nations] that all nations on earth worship a single, or at any rate a highest, God, Creator of the Universe: 1 when they found themselves in a country where temples, priests and monasteries abounded, they started from the firm assumption that Theism would also be found there, though in some very unusual form. On seeing these expectations disappointed however, and on finding that the very conceptions of such things, let alone the words to express them, were unknown, it was but natural, considering the spirit in which their inquiries were made, that their first reports of these religions should refer rather to what they did not, than to what they did, contain. Besides, for many reasons, it can be no easy task for European heads to enter fully into the sense of these faiths. In the first place, they are brought up in Optimism, whereas in Asia, existence itself is looked upon as an evil and the world as a scene of
1 This is equivalent to imputing to the Chinese the thought, that all princes on earth are tributary to their Emperor. [Add. to 3rd ed.]
SINOLOGY.
