The dance of life / Havelock Ellis.

  • Havelock Ellis
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The dance of life / Havelock Ellis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    been said “ a Chinese thinks in theatrical terms/1 We are coming near to the sphere of art. The quality of play in the Chinese character and Chinese civilisation has impressed alike those who have seen China from afar and by actual contact. It used to be said that the Chinese had invented gunpowder long before Euro¬ peans and done nothing with it but make fireworks. That seemed to the whole Western World a terrible blind¬ ness to the valuable uses of gunpowder, and it is only of late years that a European commentator has ventured to remark that “ the proper use of gunpowder is obviously to make fireworks, which may be very beautiful things, not to kill men/' Certainly the Chinese, at all events, appreciate to the full this proper use of gunpowder. “ One of the most obvious characteristics of the Chinese is their love of fireworks/’ we are told. The gravest people and the most intellectual occupy themselves with fire¬ works, and if the works of Bergson, in which pyrotechnical allusions are so frequent, are ever translated into Chinese, one can well believe that China will produce enthusiastic Bergsonians. All toys are popular ; everybody, it is said, buys toys of one sort or another ; paper windmills, rattles, Chinese lanterns, and, of course, kites, which have an almost sacred significance. They delight also in more complicated games of skill, including an elaborate form of chess, far more difficult than ours.1 It is unnecessary 1 See, for instance, the chapter on games in Professor E. H. Parker’s China : Past and Present. Reference may be made to the same author’s important and impartial larger work, China : Its History, with a discriminating chapter on Chinese personal characteristics. Perhaps the most penetrating study of Chinese psychology is, however, Arthur H. Smith’s Chinese Characteristics.
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