Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 40:158 (Apr 1883)
Article: Positivism As A Working System
Author: P. H. Johnson

BSac 40:158 (April 1883) p. 272

Positivism As A Working System

Rev. P. H. Johnson

No. III

“It is only to the mind that goes out beyond and above its own circle that what lies within that circle is clearly revealed.” — A. P. Peabody.

The most marked characteristic of China to occidental observers is the apparent absence of the principle of growth. Here is a vast civilization that has sustained itself through thousands of years with a continuity that’ makes its history seem almost an exception to the law of human mutability. It is not to be wondered at that such a spectacle should impress profoundly the Western mind, accustomed as it has been to regard change as a necessary condition of vitality. Nor is it strange that thus impressed the imagination should overshoot the mark, exaggerate actual features, and form for itself a total conception wide of the truth. We are frequently confronted with statements of Chinese immobility which distinctly convey the idea that this immense organism which we call the Chinese nation was somehow, at a remote period

BSac 40:158 (April 1883) p. 273

in the past, struck out as by a blow with all its parts ready made and adjusted; that though the nations of the West have had to fight their way upward through persecution and revolution, emerging slowly and painfully from the darkness of barbarism, the Chinese have through all the ages remained peacefully the same, repeating themselves generation after generation and century after century.

The mere statement of this conception is its contradiction. Were it even approximately true it would furnish a strange commentary on the doctrine of evolution. Like all other civilizations this one has had its gradual and progressive development, which is distinctly marked on the page of history. In politics, for instance, China has passed through phases which are closely analogous to those with which the history of Europe has made us familiar. Its one great revolution marks the transition from a feudal system to imperialism; and this transition, though finally consummated by the violence of a conqueror, was none the less one for which the people of diverse states had been gradually prepared by many converging influences. In the succeeding centuries history again permits us to follow a long struggle between two great classes; the military class, which at the time of the conquest was the only one possessed of power, and the literary class, which, after many struggles against the bitter opposition of its rival, finally dispossessed it and usurped its place. The conquest which established imperialism took place in the year 221 B.C. But it was not till the dynasty of Tang (a.d. 618–905) that the system of ...