distant lands and blessed isles, and how they learned and acquired the art of navigating from the seafaring nations along the shores of Indo-China. The north, in close contact with central and northern Asia, was constantly engaged in perpetual defensive wars against the restless hordes of Turkish and Tungusian nomads, and subject to influences coming from that direction; the horse, the donkey, the camel, the tactics of mounted archers and cavalry, felt and rug weaving, are due to this contact. The south was always deeply influenced by currents of thought pouring in from Malayan and Indian regions, and still visible in the laying-out of settlements, in domestic architecture, in everyday implements, and in certain industries and products.

The knowledge of the geographical distribution of such culture-elements as are here pointed out is naturally the basis for the understanding of their origin and historical development. For this reason let us now turn our attention to that northern culture-province which represents the original culture of the Chinese, and which was subsequently welded with the south into that unit which is now included under the name "China." The main question to be raised is, What relation did that culture hold to the other cultures of Asia? When we attempt to reconstruct by comparative and intense methods the oldest accessible primeval forms of the ancient civilizations of Asia, we are ultimately led to the result that in an undefinable prehistoric age a great universal and uniform culture-type must have existed in the northern or central hemisphere of the Old World, in strong contrast with the cultures of all primitive tribes which we encounter in the rest of Asia, in Africa, and in America. In the earliest stages of SumeroBabylonian, Indo-Iranian, and Chinese cultures, leaving aside the manifold subsequent differentiations due to indigenous development, we are confronted with a number of traits which most strikingly coincide, and which cannot be attributed to a chance accident. Conspicuous among these is the economic system of the three peoples, which was founded in like manner on agriculture and cattlebreeding; that is to say, it was then already on the same

basis as our modern system of economy. Their agricultural implements were highly developed, they tilled their fields by means of the plough drawn by an ox that was regarded as a sacred animal, and cultivated several cereals, chiefly wheat and barley. Methods of artificial irrigation were perfectly known, and elaborate agrarian laws were in force. Cattle were exclusively employed as draught-animals, particularly in connection with the plough, and were originally raised, not for their milk, but for their meat only. Carts and chariots built on the principle of the wheel are found alike in the three groups; while it is a notable fact that transportation by means of wheels is obviously absent with all primitive tribes of Asia, Africa (except ancient Egypt), in the South Sea, Australia, and America. It is remarkable also that the cart appears everywhere hand in hand with the plough, and consequently must be an invention made in the agricultural stage of civilization. The peoples of Babylonia, India, and China, in the same manner, employed chariots for making war, to which horses were harnessed. As the ox was domesticated in the interest of agriculture, the camel in the interest of commerce, so the horse was essentially an animal of war, and in its military capacity was employed as the draught-animal of war-chariots. Horseback-riding is a much later art conceived by the nomadic tribes of Scythia and inner Asia. Of other domestic animals, dog and swine were reared. As to the importance of swine, ancient China offers a striking analogy to the prehistoric cultures of central Europe, with which it has also millet and the water-chestnut in common. The offensive arm of that period was the composite bow, a very complex affair, consisting principally of flexible wood combined with horn, to which are bound layer upon layer of pliable sinew,-while most of the primitive tribes of Asia know only the simple wooden bow. Of metals, only copper and bronze were employed. In the manufacture of ceramics, the potter's wheel has been utilized since early times in the East as well as in the West. Homer, in a verse of the Iliad (XVIII, 600), compares the movements in the round of a dance to the whirling

motion of the disk turned by the potter's hand. The ancient Chinese philosophers likened the action of Heaven in evolving the universe and its beings to a potter fashioning the objects of clay by the revolution of his wheel; and Heaven, for his creative power, is directly styled a moulder or a potter's wheel. Again, this contrivance is unknown wherever pottery is worked in the primitive stages of culture. Furthermore, we find in ancient Babylonia and China a highly-developed stage of knowledge of astronomy combined with an intelligent chronological sense, time-reckoning, and a calendar system.

The time and locality in which this reconstructed primeval culture common to Western Asia, India, and China, was developed, certainly escape our knowledge, and I must forbear on this occasion discussing this side of the problem. The point which should be emphasized is, that the characteristic features, particularly the system of economy, are fundamental principles and factors of civilization, and exactly those which still form the fundament of our own modern life. We still depend for our subsistence, in the same manner as the prehistoric culture-groups of Asia did ages ago, upon the products of the soil, the cultivation of cereals, the breeding of cattle; and in principle, our methods of farming, despite all technical improvements, are still the same. We may reform almost everything in our life; we may change our language, our manners and customs, our political institutions, or our philosophy; but we cannot change that one most stable and persistent factor of our culture which we may briefly sum up in the words "cereals," "cattle," "plough," and "wheel." Whatever our modern progress in the perfection of land transportation may be, whether we consider our steamengines or motor-cars, they all depend upon the basic principle of the wheel,—that wonderful invention of prehistoric days, of the time, place, and author of which we are ignorant.

The main contribution, however, to the problem under consideration, is that ancient Chinese culture in its earliest stage cannot be the product of an isolated seclusion, but

has its due share and its root in the same fundamental ideas as go to build up the general type of Asiatic-European civilization. This opinion certainly does not imply that the basis of primeval Chinese culture is merely derived from the West, but only that it has a substratum of ideas to be met alike in the other great culture-groups of Asia from which we may reconstruct the common ancestral form of culture that must have once prevailed in most ancient times.

While, thus, the place of China is determined in the general history of civilization, there are, on the other hand, visible symptoms in existence which warrant the belief that as early as prehistoric times the Chinese must have undergone a development during several thousands of years entirely independent of any Western influence. And here we touch on one of the most interesting problems in the oldest history of Asia. Ancient Asia with its European annex is split into two large, sharply-defined economic camps, as regards the production and consumption of milk and other dairy products. The entire East-Asiatic world, inclusive of China, Korea, Japan, Indo-China, and all Malayans, does not take animal milk for food, and evinces a deep-rooted aversion toward it; and this was the state of affairs even in remotest times. On the other hand, all Indo-European peoples, the Semites, the ancient Scythians, and all nomadic tribes of northern and central Asia, as Turks, Mongols, and Tibetans, are all milk-drinkers, and were so in early historical times. The remarkable feature about this case certainly is not the bare fact that the EastAsiatics abstain from milk,-for the aboriginal tribes of America and Australia and others, simply for the lack of milk-producing animals, do exactly the same, but the essential point is that the Chinese and their followers adhere to this practice, despite an abundance of milk-furnishing domestic animals in their possession, and despite longenduring intercourse with neighboring milk-consuming peoples, whose habits and mode of life were very familiar to them. They rear cows, buffalo, mares, camels, sheep, goats, all animals from which milk could be derived, but

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they do not even understand how to milk them. They were at all times surrounded by Turkish and Mongol peoples, whose daily sustenance depends upon milk and kumiss, butter and cheese. This fact has been perfectly known to the Chinese, but, notwithstanding, they never acquired the habit. In India and Indo-China we face the same striking fact, in that the aboriginal inhabitants, though willing to submit to the higher civilization of the Aryan Hindu, never adopted from them the custom of milkdrinking. It follows, therefore, that our consumption of animal milk cannot be looked upon as a self-evident and spontaneous phenomenon, for which it has long been taken, but that it is a mere matter of educated force of habit As natural as it appears to us, owing to timehonored practice and tradition, so just as unnatural, tedious, and barbarous does it strike the Chinese and other peoples of eastern Asia, who uphold that it is cruel to deprive the calf of its mother's milk. This ethical opinion, surely, does not give the true reason for their abstinence from milk, but is no more than a speculative after-thought. No less remarkable is it that no religious taboo is placed on milk in any of the Eastern religions, and that the aversion is not prompted by motives of any religious character; it is purely a matter of social and economic life. Thus we are led to distinguish in the history of the domestication of cattle two main and fundamental stages. In the primary stage, the milking faculty of the cow was unknown to man, and the ox was exclusively the sacred animal of agriculture, drawing the plough; and the invention of the plough and the cultivation of cereals are events closely affiliated with the taming of the ox. This is the very point which Chinese society has in common with the rest of Asia and Europe. At the close of this initial period, the western portion of the Old World subsequently advanced to a further stage of development, from which the Chinese were debarred,the acquisition of dairy economy. This was an exceedingly complex, slow, and long process, moving along two lines,one in the producer, the animal, in which the productive power was gradually trained; the other in the consumer,