The Religion of The Chinese

Is China's religion a world-religion, and as such worth studying? A place as a world-religion must, without hesitation, be assigned to it on account of the vast number of its adherents. It has extended the circle of its influence far beyond the boundaries of the empire proper, and has gained access, together with Chinese culture generally, into Korea, Japan, Manchuria, and Turkestan, as well as into Indo-China, though, of course, in modified forms. Hence a proper understanding of the religions of East Asia in general requires in the first place an understanding of the religion of China. China's religion proper, that is to say, apart from Buddhism, which is of foreign introduction, is a spontaneous product, spontaneously developed in the course of time. Its origin is lost in the night of ages. But there is no reason to doubt, that it is the first religion the Chinese race ever had. Theories advanced by some scientists that its origin may be looked for in Chaldean or Bactrian countries must as yet be rejected as having no solid foundation. It has had its patriarchs and apostles, whose writings, or the writings about whom, hold a pre-eminent position; but it has had no founders comparable with Buddha or Mohammed. It has had a spontaneous birth on China's soil. Since its birth, it has developed itself under the influence of the strongest conservatism. Its primeval forms were never, as far as is historically known, swept away by any other religion, or by tidal waves of religious movement and revolution. Buddhism eradicated nothing; the religion of the Crescent is only at the beginning of its work; that of the Cross has hardly passed the threshold of China. In order to understand its actual state, we have to distinguish sharply between its native, and its exotic or Buddhist element. It is the native element which will occupy us first and principally.