All the religious rites in China have their origin in, or are in celebration of, some natural phenomenon or some periodical event in Nature. They celebrate the summer and winter solstices, the equinoxes, the New Year, the awakening of spring, when the sap (life-giving element) begins to mount. The Harvest Moon is the time of the going to rest of this life-giving element. Their complicated ceremonial is but the crystallization of some simple observance of Nature’s fundamental laws. This ceremonial has been kept alive all these centuries, because of the vivifying spark of Nature which enkindled them. These rites are now observed without a thought of their origin, but Nature still remains their creative force. In spite of their conventions, the Chinese have kept very near to Nature, and I believe this is the secret of their wonderful vitality. They have been overrun and conquered by many different races, and their assimilation of these conquerors is one of the most astonishing things in the ethnic study of this wonderful race.
No conquering race has ever changed the Chinese. Tartars, Mongols, Manchus have all passed and become amalgamated with them. Their conquerors have adopted the Chinese philosophy and religion, their customs and habits, and even their system of government. And they have never been able to impose any really new system of government upon the Chinese.
These founders of Dynasties in China have all been “warriors bold” and reckless marauders with little philosophy and no literature to speak of. When the Manchus, the last of these conquerors, founders of the present Dynasty, established themselves in Peking, in 1646, they were a wild and warlike race. They, like all the other conquerors of China, conciliated their vanquished foes by all sorts of concessions, and they now rule by Chinese laws, and today are hardly distinguishable from the Chinese. They have never made, any more than the other conquerors, the slightest impress upon this calm and passive race; and they have become Chinese. “Today the Emperor Kwang-Hsu is recognized as one of the best