I have added to these, two essays in which I have tried to show how and why men, foreigners who are looked upon as authorities on the subject, do not really understand the real Chinaman and the Chinese language. The Rev. Arthur Smith, who wrote the Chinese Characteristics, I have tried to show, does not understand the real Chinaman, because, being an American,—he is not deep enough to understand the real Chinaman. Dr. Giles again, who is considered a great sinologue, I have tried to show does not really understand the Chinese language, because, being an Englishman, he is not broad enough,—he has not the philosophic insight and the broadness which that insight gives, I have wanted to include in this volume an essay I wrote on J. B. Bland and Backhouse's book on the famous late Empress Dowager, but unfortunately I have not been able to find a copy of that essay which was published in the "National Review" in Shanghai some four years ago. In that essay, I have tried to show that, such men as J. B. Bland and Backhouse do not and cannot understand the real Chinese woman,—the highest type of woman produced by the Chinese civilisation viz the late Empress Dowager, because such men as J. B. Bland and Backhouse are not simple,—have not the simplicity of mind, being too clever and having, like all modern men, a distorted intellect.[1] In fact, in order to understand the real Chinaman and the Chinese
- ↑ Mencius says, "What I hate in your clever men is that they always distort things. 所惡於智者為其鑿也" Bk IV. Part II. 26,
