Excerpt from A General View of Chinese Civilization: And of the Relations of the West With China In 1859 and 18601 delivered a course of free public lectures on the General History of Humanity. Three of the lectures in that course were devoted to Confucius and Chinese Civilization; and these I now publish. My main object in singling out this particular portion of a vast body of doctrine for separate publication is to bring to the notice of the higher minds and hearts amongst us the need. there is for setting on foot a reasonable and moral policy for regulating the relations of the West with the rest of the World. Those relations are coming more and more under the direction of a commercialism of the baser sort, or of a narrow proselytism, which is often, after all, very little better than a pretext for furthering some political or mercantile object. I am in hopes, also, that this sample of a political conception, based on a thorough philosophic study of the situation which it is desired to modify, will suffice to convince reflecting minds of the necessity of bringing to the study of social phenomena at least the same degree of attention and perseverance as is required for the study of the simpler phenomena of life and of the world. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.