As indicated above, they are not defective in brain
weight, and their application to study is long continued and very
severe; but their attention is directed to matters which cannot
possibly make them wise from the occidental standpoint. They learn
no mathematics and no science, but spend years in copying the poetry
of the T'ang Dynasty, in order to learn the Chinese characters, and
in the end cannot write the language correctly, because many modern
characters are not represented in this ancient poetry. Their attention
to Chinese history is great, as befits their reverence for the past;
but they do not organize their knowledge, they have no adequate
textbooks or apparatus for study, and they make no clear distinction
between fact and fiction. In general, they learn only rules and no
principles, and rely on memory without the aid of reason, with the
result that the man who stops studying often forgets everything, and
the professional student is amazingly ignorant in the line of his own
work:
Multitudes of Chinese scholars know next to nothing about
matters directly in the line of their studies, and in regard
to which we should consider ignorance positively disgraceful.
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