Nothing perhaps points more directly to a high degree of civilization in China than the almost in credible density of its population, now rated, according to Gützlaff, at 367 millions of inhabitants. 1 For whether we compare countries or ages, we find on the whole that civilization keeps pace with population.
The pertinacious zeal with which the Jesuit missionaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries strove to inculcate their own relatively new doctrines into the minds of this very ancient nation, and their futile endeavours to discover early traces of their own faith in that country, left them no time for a profound study of the belief which prevails there. Therefore Europe has only lately obtained some slight knowledge of the religious state of the Chinese. We now know, that is to say, that in China there exists first of all a worship of Nature, which is universally professed, and dates from the earliest times, even, it is alleged, from before the discovery of fire, wherefore
1 According to a Chinese official Report on the census, printed in Pekin, and found by the English in the Chinese Governor's palace on entering Canton, China had 396 millions of inhabitants in 1852, and allowing for a constant increase, may now have 400 millions. (Moniteur de la Flotte, end of May, 1857.)
The Reports of the Russian Clerical Mission in Pekin give the returns of 1842 as 414,687,000.
According to the tables published by the Russian Embassy at Pekin, the population, in 1849, amounted to 415 millions. (Post-Zeitung, 1858.) [Add. to 3rd ed.]
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