This is the bright side of Chinese life; the dark side is the fearful ennui, the moral death, which falls on a people among whom there are no such things as hope, expectation, or the sense of progress.
Hence the habit of suicide among this people, indicating their small hold on life.

In every Chinese drama there are two or three suicides.

A soldier will commit suicide rather than go into battle.

If you displease a Chinaman, he will resent the offence by killing himself on your doorstep, hoping thus to give you some inconvenience.

Such are the merits and such the defects of the system of Confucius.
The doctrine of Zoroaster and of the Zend Avesta is far nobler.