The most conservative of all systems, and also the most prosaic, its essential virtue is reverence for all that is.

It is not perplexed by any fear or hope of change; the thing which has been is that which shall be; and the very idea of progress is eliminated from the thought of China.
Safety, repose, peace, these are its blessings.

Probably merely physical comfort, earthly _bien-etre_, was never carried further than in the Celestial Empire.

That virtue so much exploded in Western civilization, of respect for parents, remains in full force in China.

The emperor is honored as the father of his people; ancestors are worshipped in every family; and the best reward offered for a good action is a patent of nobility, which does not reach forward to one's children, but backward to one's parents.