No More Learning

But who knows not that every nation has its Geoffry of Monmouth? And we
have already observed the legends which took their rise from the Annus
Magnus of the Chaldean and Egyptian astronomers, an apparent revolution
of the stars, which in reality has no existence. To the fanciful who
held this Annus Magnus, it seemed hard to suppose that our world was in
its first revolution of the great year, and to suppose that many were
past was easy. And, that this was the case, we have absolute proof in
the doctrines of the Brahmins, who, though they talk of hundreds of
thousands of years which are past, yet confess, that this, the fourth
world, has not yet attained its 6000th year. And much within this
compass are all the credible proofs of Chinese antiquity comprehended.
To three heads all three proofs are reduceable--their form of
government, which, till the conquest of the Tartars in 1644, bore the
marks of the highest antiquity; their astronomical observations; and
their history.

Simply and purely patriarchal, every father was the magistrate in his
own family; and the emperor, who acted by his substitutes, the
Mandarins, was venerated and obeyed as the father of all. The most
passive submission to authority thus branched out was inculcated by
Confucius, and their other philosophers, as the greatest duty of
morality. But, if there is an age in sacred or profane history where the
manners of mankind are thus delineated, no superior antiquity is proved
by the form of Chinese government. Their ignorance of the very ancient
art of ingrafting fruit-trees, and the state of their language (like the
Hebrew in its paucity of words), a paucity characteristic of the ages
when the ideas of men required few syllables to clothe them, prove
nothing farther than the early separation of the Chinese colony{*} from
the rest of mankind; nothing farther, except that they have continued
till very lately without any material intercourse with the other nations
of the world.

{*} The Chinese colony! Yes, let philosophy smile; let her talk of the
different species of men which are found in every country; let her brand
as absurd the opinion of Montesquieu, which derives all the human race
from one family. Let her enjoy her triumph. Peace to her insolence,
peace to her dreams and her reveries. But let common sense be contented
with the demonstration (See Whiston, Bentley, etc.
) that a creation in
every country is not wanted, and that one family is sufficient in every
respect for the purpose. If philosophy will talk of black and white men
as different in species, let common sense ask her for a demonstration,
that climate and manner of life cannot produce this difference; and let
her add, that there is the strongest presumptive experimental proof that
the difference thus happens. If philosophy draw her inferences from the
different passions of different tribes; let common sense reply, that
stripped of every accident of brutalization and urbanity, the human mind
in all its faculties, all its motives, hopes and fears, is most
wonderfully the same in every age and country. If philosophy talk of the
impossibility of peopling distant islands and continents from one
family, let common sense tell her to read Bryant's Mythology. If
philosophy asserts that the Kelts wherever they came found aborigines,
let common sense reply, there were tyrants enough almost 2000 years
before their emigrations, to drive the wretched survivors of slaughtered
hosts to the remotest wilds. She may also add, that many islands have
been found which bore not one trace of mankind, and that even Otaheite
bears the evident marks of receiving its inhabitants from a shipwreck,
its only animals being the hog, the dog, and the rat. In a word, let
common sense say to philosophy, "I open my egg with a pen-knife, but you
open yours with the blow of a sledge hammer. "

A continued succession of astronomical observations, for 4000 years, was
claimed by the Chinese, when they were first visited by the Europeans.
Voltaire, that _son of truth_, has often with great triumph mentioned
the indubitable proofs of Chinese antiquity; but at these times he must
have received his information from the same dream which told him that
Camoens accompanied his friend GAMA in the voyage which discovered the
East Indies. If Voltaire and his disciples will talk of Chinese
astronomy, and the 4000 years antiquity of its perfection, let them
enjoy every consequence which may possibly result from it. But let them
allow the same liberty to others. Let them allow others to draw _their_
inferences from a few stubborn facts, facts which demonstrate the
ignorance of the Chinese in astronomy. The earth, they imagined, was a
great plain, of which their country was the midst; and so ignorant were
they of the cause of eclipses, that they believed the sun and moon were
assaulted, and in danger of being devoured by a huge dragon. The stars
were considered as the directors of human affairs, and thus their
boasted astronomy ends in that silly imposition, judicial astrology.
Though they had made some observations on the revolutions of the
planets, and though in the emperor's palace there was an observatory,
the first apparatus of proper instruments ever known in China was
introduced by Father Verbiest. After this it need scarcely be added,
that their astronomical observations which pretend an antiquity of 4000
years, are as false as a Welch genealogy, and that the Chinese
themselves, when instructed by the Jesuits, were obliged to own that
their calculations were erroneous and impossible.