If, as stated in the note quoted
from Professor Mueller, the emperor countenances both the Taoist worship
and the Buddhist, he does so for reasons of state; to please especially
his Buddhistic subjects in Thibet and Mongolia, and not to offend the
many whose superstitious fancies incline to Taoism.
When I went out and in as a missionary among the Chinese people for
about thirty years, it sometimes occurred to me that only the inmates of
their monasteries and the recluses of both systems should be enumerated
as Buddhists and Taoists; but I was in the end constrained to widen that
judgment, and to admit a considerable following of both among the
people, who have neither received the tonsure nor assumed the yellow
top. Dr. Eitel, in concluding his discussion of this point in his
"Lecture on Buddhism, an Event in History," says: "It is not too much to
say that most Chinese are theoretically Confucianists, but emotionally
Buddhists or Taoists. But fairness requires us to add that, though the
mass of the people are more or less influenced by Buddhist doctrines,
yet the people, as a whole, have no respect for the Buddhist church, and
habitually sneer at Buddhist priests." For the "most" in the former of
these two sentences I would substitute "nearly all;" and between my
friend's "but" and "emotionally" I would introduce "many are," and would
not care to contest his conclusion further.
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