Now the old Chinese, accepting distance as the supreme thing, had
made it the starting-point as well as the end of their government.
In the perfected viceregal system which grew up under the Ming
Dynasty, and which was taken over by the Manchus as a sound and
admirable governing principle, though they superimposed their own
military system of Tartar Generals, we have the plan that
nullified the great obstacle. Authority of every kind was
delegated by the Throne to various distant governing centuries in
a most complete and sweeping manner, each group of provinces,
united under a viceroy, being in everything but name so many
independent linked commonwealths, called upon for matricular
contributions in money and grain but otherwise left severely
alone. [Footnote: A very interesting proof--and one that has never
been properly exposed--of the astoundingly rationalistic
principles on which the Chinese polity is founded is to be seen in
the position of priesthoods in China. Unlike every other
civilization in the world, at no stage of the development of the
State has it been necessary for religion in China to intervene
between the rulers and the ruled, saving the people from
oppression. In Europe without the supernatural barrier of the
Church, the position of the common people in the Middle Ages would
have been intolerable, and life, and virtue totally unprotected.
Buckle, in his "History of Civilization," like other extreme
radicals, has failed to understand that established religions have
paradoxically been most valuable because of their vast secular
powers, exercised under the mask of spiritual authority.
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