Status Updates From Ways That Are Dark: The Tru...

foundations of our material success were being laid in the science of Greece and on the battlefields of Roman legions well before the Christian era began. Christianity is for us, in its theology and ethics, a cult of reward for effort, temporal and eternal. To Chinese skepticism, the eternal part is hard to accept, while the conditions of his environment do not permit the belief that he will be much better off

Chinese with money might as well gamble it over the gaming table as any other way, and have at least the thrill of exciting play instead of the long gnawing anxiety following the equal, if not greater, risk of investing it

They have industriousness and intelligence. But two other essentials, honesty and willingness to coöperate, they emphatically lack, and some deeply inner ingredient of character seems to militate against remedying this lack. They simply cannot work among themselves in large undertakings.