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China
 WORLD SOCIAL CHANGE
Series Editor: Mark Selden

Perilous Passage: Mankind and the Global Ascendance of Capital

by Amiya Kumar Bagchi
Anarchy as Order: The History and Future of Civil Humanity
by Mohammed Bamyeh
Water Frontier: Commerce and the Chinese in the Lower Mekong Region, 1750–1880
edited by Nola Cooke and Li Tana
Empire to Nation: Historical Perspectives on the Making of the Modern World
edited by Joseph W. Esherick, Hasan Kayali, and Eric Van Young
First Globalization: The Eurasian Exchange, 1500–1800
by Geoffrey C. Gunn
Istanbul: Between the Global and the Local
edited by Caglar Keyder
China: Its Environment and History
by Robert B. Marks
The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Environmental Narrative from the
Fifteenth to the Twenty-First Century, 3rd edition
by Robert B. Marks
The Politics of Greed: How Privatization Structured Politics in Central and
Eastern Europe
by Andrew Schwartz
Leaving China: Media, Mobility, and Transnational Imagination
by Wanning Sun
Masters of Terror: Indonesia’s Military and Violence in East Timor
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Through the Prism of Slavery: Labor, Capital, and World Economy
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edited by John Torpey
The Economic Aspect of the Abolition of the West Indian Slave Trade and Slavery
by Eric Williams, edited by Dale W. Tomich, introduction by William Darity Jr.
 China
An Environmental History

Second Edition

Robert B. Marks

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
Published by Rowman & Littlefield
A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.rowman.com

Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB, United Kingdom

Copyright © 2017 by Rowman & Littlefield

First edition 2012.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by
any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval
systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who
may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Marks, Robert, 1949– author.
Title: China : an environmental history / Robert B. Marks.
Description: Second edition. | Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. | Series: World social
change | “First edition, 2012.” | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016044679 (print) | LCCN 2016044758 (ebook) | ISBN 9781442277878
(hardcover : alkaline paper) | ISBN 9781442277885 (paperback : alkaline paper) | ISBN
9781442277892 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Human ecology—China—History. | Human geography—China—History.
| Nature—Effect of human beings on—China—History. | Social change—Environmental
aspects—China—History. | Environmental degradation—China—History. | Landscape
changes—China—History. | China—Environmental conditions.
Classification: LCC GF656 .M37 2017 (print) | LCC GF656 (ebook) | DDC 304.20951—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016044679

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of

American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

 Brief Contents

List of Illustrations xiii

Preface to the Second Edition xvii
Acknowledgments xxi
1 Introduction: Problems and Perspectives 1
2 China’s Natural Environment and Early Human Settlement to 1000 BCE 15
3  tates, Wars, and Farms: Environmental Change in Ancient and
S
Early Imperial China, 1000 BCE–300 CE 65
4  eforesting the North and Colonizing the South in the
D
Middle Imperial Period, 300–1300 CE 119
5  mpire and Environment: China’s Borderlands, Islands,
E
and Inner Peripheries in the Late Imperial Period, 1300–1800 CE 191
6 Environmental Degradation in Modern China, 1800–1949 257
7 “Controlling” Nature in the People’s Republic of China, 1949–Present 307
8 Conclusion: China and Its Environment in World Historical Perspective 393
Select Bibliography 413
Index 427

v
 Contents

List of Illustrations xiii

Preface to the Second Edition xvii
Acknowledgments xxi

1 Introduction: Problems and Perspectives 1

Plan of the Book 8

2 China’s Natural Environment and Early Human Settlement to 1000 BCE 15

Natural Environment 16
Landforms 16
China’s Geographic Regions 18
Forests and Ecosystems 19
China’s Climate 22
Human Settlement and Pre-History 26
The Origins of Agriculture in China 27
Rice Environments in Central and South China 28
Malaria 32
The Yangzi River Valley 32
The Environment for Millet in North China 33
Nitrogen and Fertilizer 36
Summary 37
Prehistoric Environmental Change 38
The Formation of a Chinese Interaction Sphere, 4000–2000 BCE 43
Bronze-Age China: Technology and Environmental Change,
2000–1000 BCE 45
The Bronze-Age Shang State, 1500–1050 BCE 47
Anyang 48
Shang Social Organization 48
Domestication and Extinction of Wild Cattle 49
vii
viii Contents

Food 50
Shang “Civilization” and “Barbarian” Others 50
Environmental Change, 1500–1000 BCE 51
Energy Regime 55
Climate Change and the Fall of the Shang 56
Conclusion 57

3  tates, Wars, and Farms: Environmental Change in Ancient

S
and Early Imperial China, 1000 BCE–300 CE 65
States, War, and Environmental Change in Ancient China,
ca. 1000–250 BCE 65
Nomadic Pastoralists of the Steppe 68
Other Non-Chinese Peoples 72
The Zhou Conquest: Colonies and Forests, 1050–750 BCE 73
Wars, Warring States, and the Creation of the First Empire,
750–200 BCE 77
Iron and Steel in Ancient China 79
War and the Use of Natural Resources 81
The Warring States and Non-Chinese Peoples 82
Pastoral Nomads and Nomadic Invaders 83
Summary 85
Environmental Change in the Early Empire, 221 BCE–220 CE 85
Han Colonialism, the End of the Xiongnu Steppe Nomads,
and the Beginnings of Desertification 87
Han Roads and the Opening of New Lands 90
Empire, Agriculture, and Deforestation 93
Water Control 96
The (Yellow) River 98
Cities and Eating 100
Imperial Hunting Parks 100
Summary 101
Ancient Chinese Ideas about Nature and the Environment 102
Confucius 104
Daoism 104
Later Confucians 105
Legalism 106
Resource Constraints and the Control of “Nature” 107
Epidemic Disease 108
The End of the Early Empire 109
Conclusion 110

4  eforesting the North and Colonizing the South in the

D
Middle Imperial Period, 300–1300 CE 119
North China: War, Depopulation, and the Environment, 300–600 CE 122
Environmental Change in the Yangzi River Valley 127
 Contents ix

Wet-Rice Cultivation 129

North and South Reunited in the Middle Empire: The Sui, Tang,
and Song Dynasties, 589–1279 CE 132
War and Water in Reuniting China under the Sui Dynasty (589–618) 134
The Grand Canal 135
Han Colonization of the South and Southeast 137
“South of the Mountains”: Lingnan 138
The Southeast Coast 142
Disease Regimes North and South 143
Malaria in the South 143
Contagious and Epidemic Disease in the North 146
New Agricultural Technologies and Environmental Change 148
Weeds and Fish 152
Technological Diffusion 153
Landed Estates 154
Buddhist Monasteries 154
Tang-Era Attitudes (and Actions) toward Nature 157
China’s Medieval Industrial Revolution 158
Colonizing Sichuan and Categorizing Others 162
Organizational Context 164
Chinese Views of “Barbarians” and Others 165
The “Cooked” and the “Raw” 165
Animals 165
Landscapes and Water “Control” 166
North China 166
Yellow River Water Control 168
Environmental Decline on the North China Plain, 1048–1128 170
South China: The Making of the Pearl River Delta 172
Flood Control 174
Fields Captured from the Sea 176
The Built Environment: Cities and Waste 177
An Urban Exemplar: Tang Chang’an 178
Waste, Sustainability, and Nutrient Cycles 181
Conclusion 183

5  mpire and Environment: China’s Borderlands, Islands,

E
and Inner Peripheries in the Late Imperial Period, 1300–1800 CE 191
A New Historical and Institutional Context 191
Population Size and Distribution 191
Markets 194
Climatic Changes 196
Frontiers and Borderlands 197
Environment and Identity 197
The Southwest 198
The Ordos Desert and the Great Wall 207
The Seventeenth-Century Crisis 210
x Contents

The Great Hunt in the Northeast 212

China Marches West 214
Islands and Their Ecological Transformations 217
Hainan Island 217
The Island of Taiwan 222
Land Cover, Land Use, and Land Ownership 226
Exploitation of Inner Peripheries 228
Highland Specialists: The Hakka and the “Shack People” 228
The Central Yangzi Region—Hunan and Hubei Provinces 232
The Lower Yangzi Highlands 237
The Ecological Limits of Empire 240
China’s Southwest and “Zomia” 244
Debates over Natural Resource Use (and Abuse) 244
Conclusion: Population, Markets, the State, and the Environment 246

6 Environmental Degradation in Modern China, 1800–1949 257

Chinese Consumption and Its Ecological Shadows 257
The Pacific Islands and Sandalwood 258
Siberia and Furs 259
The American West Coast: Sea Otter and Beaver Pelts 259
India and Opium 260
Opium and Global Epidemics 261
Opium and War 262
Foreign Imperialism and China’s Environment 264
Ecological Degradation and Environmental Crisis 264
Northwest China 266
The Huai River Valley 269
The Yellow River and Grand Canal Region 269
The North China Plain 274
Yangzi River Valley 277
South China 278
Southwest China: Yunnan 279
West China: Sichuan 280
Tibetan/Qinghai High Mountain Plateau 281
Agricultural Sustainability 282
The Mulberry Tree and Fish Pond Combination 283
Resource Constraints, Environmental Management, and Social Conflict 285
Forests as Food Reservoirs 288
Into the Twentieth Century 289
ENSO Droughts and Chinese Famines 289
North China Famines and Migration to Manchuria and Inner Mongolia 291
Fujian Forests and Forestry 293
Fisheries 294
 Contents xi

War’s Environmental Catastrophes 295

Conclusion 297

7 “Controlling” Nature in the People’s Republic of China, 1949–Present 307

Socialist Industrialization and Subduing Nature 307
Socialist Industrialization and Its Material Constraints 308
Depleted Soils 309
Foreign Opposition to Chinese Socialism 309
A Big and Growing Population (Is Good) 309
Shortages of Chemical Fertilizer 311
Chinese Communist Ideas about Nature 313
The Idea to Control Nature 313
Soviet Lysenkoism 314
Post-Mao Reform Era, 1978–Present 315
Breaks with Maoism 316
Chemical Fertilizer Plants 316
Population Control 316
Changes to Forests and Land Use 318
China’s Official Forest-Cover Statistics 318
Forest Ownership Regimes 322
Collective Ownership 322
The Responsibility System of “Private” Ownership 324
State-Owned Forests 326
Deforestation during the PRC: “The Three Great Cuttings” Plus One 326
Great Cutting No. 1: The Great Leap Forward, 1958–60 327
Great Cutting No. 2: The Third Front and the
Cultural Revolution, 1966–76 327
Great Cutting No. 3: Deng’s Reform Era, 1978–88 329
Market-Driven Deforestation, 1992–99: The Last Great Cutting? 329
Grasslands and Desertification 331
Summary 336
State Nature Preserves and the Protection of Biodiversity 336
Nature Reserves 337
The “Great Green Wall” and Other Reforestation Projects 339
Wildlife, Consumption, and Epidemic Disease 341
“Controlling” Water 343
“Harness the Huai!” 343
Dam the Yellow River 344
Environmental Consequences of Dam Building 345
The Huai River Runs Black 346
Deep Drilling on the North China Plain 347
The South-to-North Water Transfer Project 348
The Three Gorges Dam 349
Historic Dujiangyan 350
xii Contents

The Three Parallel Rivers Region of Yunnan 351

“Develop the West”: The Struggle to Dominate Nature Continues 353
The Conquest of Malaria and the Building of Dams 354
Polluting the Atmosphere 357
Powering the Economic Surge—Mostly with Coal 357
Auto-Nation China 358
China and Global Climate Change 360
Tibet, Glaciers, and Desertification 362
Urbanization and Pigs 364
Environmental Protests, Consciousness, Activism, and Movements 366
Lake Tai and Crusading Villager Wu Lihong 367
For Clean Water, Peasants Protest a Fertilizer Factory in Gansu 368
A Large-Scale “Environmental Mass Incident” 368
State Responses to Environmental Problems 370
Green NGOs 371
Environmentalism and Democracy 372
Return to the “Angry” River 373
An “Ecological Civilization”? 375
Conclusion 376

8 Conclusion: China and Its Environment in World Historical Perspective 393

Main Themes in China’s Environmental History 394
Changes in Land Use and Land Cover 394
Climate Change 394
Water Control 395
Deforestation 396
Colonization 396
The Simplification of Ecosystems 396
Species Extinction, Extirpation, and Conservation 397
The Sustainability of Agriculture 398
The Problem of 1949: 3,000 Years versus 30 398
China’s Ecological Resilience 399
The Driving Forces of China’s Environmental Change 400
Agriculture and the Chinese State 401
Markets and Commerce 403
Technological Change 404
Cultural Ideas and Practices 405
Population Size and Dynamics 405
China’s Environmental History in a World Historical Context 406

Select Bibliography 413

Index 427
 Illustrations

TABLES

1.1 Timelines for China’s Environmental History 10

4.1 China’s Population and Cultivated Land Area, 2–1848 CE 159

MAPS

1.1 The Range of the Tiger, ca. 2009 2

2.1 China’s Major Physical Features 17
2.2 Geographic Regions of China 19
2.3 Paleovegetation of China 20
2.4 China’s Topography 21
2.5 China’s Annual Precipitation 22
2.6 Maximum Positions of the East Asian Monsoon Front 23
2.7 The Distribution of Loess in China 34
2.8 Changes in the Course of the Yellow River 39
2.9 Neolithic Migrations in China 41
2.10 Major Regional Cultures in China 42
3.1 Northern Limits of the Asian Elephant 67
3.2 Zhou China 73
3.3 Major States of the Warring States Period 78
3.4 “Long Walls” of the Warring States Era 83

xiii
xiv Illustrations

3.5 Qin and Han Dynastic Territories 88

3.6 The Han Road System 91
3.7 The Population Density of Han China, ca. 2 CE 95
3.8 The Zheng Guo Canal 97
4.1 The Southward Shift of China’s Capital Cities 121
4.2 The Lower Yangzi Region 130
4.3 The Territorial Extent of the Tang and Song Dynasties 133
4.4 North China’s Canal System, Late Tang 135
4.5 South and Southeast China 145
4.6 Epidemics of 636–655 147
4.7 The Change of the Yellow River’s Course, 1194 170
4.8 The Pearl River Delta, 2–1820 CE 173
5.1 The Yuan Dynasty (Mongol-ruled China) 194
5.2 Late Imperial Frontiers, Borders, and Hot Spots 199
5.3 The Territories of the Ming and Qing Dynasties 208
5.4 The Islands of Taiwan and Hainan in Relation to Mainland China 218
5.5 The Island of Taiwan 224
5.6 Central and Eastern China 233
7.1 China’s Provinces, ca. 2010 308
7.2 Forests of China, ca. 1928 319
7.3 The Three Parallel Rivers Region of Yunnan Province 351
7.4 Proposed Cascade of Thirteen Dams on the Nu River 355

FIGURES

2.1 An “Oracle Bone” 24

2.2 Zhu Kezhen’s Reconstruction of China’s Climate Changes 25
2.3 The Rice Plant 29
2.4 Millet Plants (Setaria and Panicum) 35
3.1 The Ling Canal 98
4.1 Percentage of China’s Population in the South 119
 Illustrations xv

4.2 The Karst Region Along the Li River Near Guilin 138
4.3 The Meiling Pass 139
4.4 Types of Diked and Enclosed Fields 150
4.5 Rectlinear Farmland Layout on the North China Plain 167
4.6 North China Farmland, ca. 2000 167
4.7 Landsat Photo of the Pearl River Delta, December 14, 1975 172
4.8 Shatian 176
5.1 China’s Population, 200 BCE–2000 CE 192
5.2 China’s Population Density by Region, 2–1542 CE 227
6.1 Logging in Late Imperial China 266
6.2 Siltation in Shanxi Province, ca. 1910 267
6.3 Erosion on the Loess Plateau 268
6.4 Dike Repair on the Yellow River 271
6.5 The Zhefang Valley in Yunnan 280
6.6 Well-Tended Farmland in Sichuan 281
7.1 China’s Population Size and Growth Rate 310
7.2 China’s Production of Nitrogenous Chemical Fertilizer, 1961–2002 317
7.3 China’s Official Forest Cover Statistics, 1950s–1999 320
7.4 A “Forest” in Eastern Guangdong, 1980 325
 Preface to the Second Edition

In the five years since the first edition of this book was published, several develop-
ments have prompted me to undertake revisions and updates for a second edition.
First, there have been many changes in China over the past five years that require
updating chapter 7, “‘Controlling’ Nature in the People’s Republic of China, 1949–
Present”). The 2014 bilateral agreement between the presidents of the United States
and China on capping and decreasing emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) was im-
portant in itself because, as the two largest economies on earth, China and the United
States together account for nearly half of all global GHG emissions. But that bilateral
agreement led the way to the international agreement on climate change finalized in
Paris in 2015. The Paris Agreement on climate change has been hailed by environ-
mentalists around the world as a breakthrough in the ability and commitment of all the
world’s countries to address global climate change.
That clarity of understanding of the challenges and dangers faced by China and the
world arising from unrestrained emissions of GHGs, especially carbon dioxide (CO2),
has also pushed forward an increased awareness on the part of China’s leaders of the
necessity to address the mounting environmental problems it faces. This change is
important because while in the past the Chinese state adopted very progressive and
strict environmental protection laws at the national level, enforcement of those laws
fell apart at the local level because officials and members of the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP) were rewarded exclusively by how their efforts contributed to economic
growth as measured by GDP. That singular focus on economic growth contributed to
collusion between local officials and industries to overlook their polluting or environ-
mentally damaging actions in the name of “development.” In 2014 and 2015, the Chi-
nese state and the CCP made it clear that the careers of officials and party members
would be judged not solely on how they have helped grow the economy, but on how
effectively they have enforced environmental protection laws.
There have been many other developments over the past five years in China
regarding the environment, and I have revised those sections as well to ensure that
chapter 7 is as up to date as possible. But in addition, these recent changes regarding
China’s attitudes and actions regarding climate change and the enforcement of its
environmental laws have led me to be more optimistic about the environmental fu-
xvii
xviii Preface to the Second Edition

ture for both China and the world, and that too is reflected in how I have conceived
and revised the chapter.
Second, the field of Chinese environmental history continues to develop, with more
scholars producing a larger and more varied body of work than was available just
five years ago. I am pleased that I have been able to incorporate some of that new
scholarship into this edition, and thereby to respond to some of the comments and
recommendations from two anonymous users and reviewers of the first edition. But
rather than addressing all of those revisions individually, I’d like to frame a larger
issue that flows throughout the book: that of the agency of plants, animals, humans,
and “nature” in making China’s environmental history. Certainly we know that events
in nature can have dramatic effects on human society. Earthquakes, floods, and cli-
mate change (both warming and cooling) have jolted and changed China as people
have responded and adapted to those natural shocks. Moreover, we know that human
activities contribute to global warming, and not just in the recent industrial era. Clima-
tologist William Ruddiman has argued that rice farming and the clearance of forests
for farms released into the atmosphere methane and carbon dioxide, both powerful
greenhouse gases, coincident with the beginnings of agriculture. If so, Chinese have
been contributing GHGs to the atmosphere for a very long time.1
In terms of China’s environmental history, the Yellow River might be considered
the poster child for the interaction of humans with their changing environment. Four
scholars have been working on aspects of that history, and their work is changing
how we conceptualize the place of the Yellow River in China’s history. Professor
Ling Zhang, whose work on the Song era informs chapter 4, has published a new
book, as have David Pietz and Micah Muscolino, and another scholar, Ruth Mos-
tern, has another book on the Yellow River in process.2 That’s a vast amount of new
scholarship on the Yellow River, and those interested have a lot of important new
work to explore.
But what about plants and animals? Can they be said to have historical agency?
Historians and our narratives, even of environmental history, tend to be centered on
humans. Noted environmental historian J. R. McNeill confronted this issue directly
in his environmental history of the twentieth century, which he unashamedly said “is
anthropocentric.” “An environmental history of the world,” McNeill said, “written
from the point of view of lemmings or lichen might be very interesting, but I lack the
imagination for that.”3 More recently, though, work by other environmental historians
looks at the mutual interactions of humans and nature to de-center, but not to deny,
the agency of humans alone in making history.4
In an earlier book on the environmental history of south China that included tigers
in the narrative, I too pondered the question of whether they had historical agency, but
ultimately I backed off from that conclusion. “Although the Han Chinese experienced
both tiger attacks and non-Han uprisings as threats to their way of life,” I wrote then,
“I do not impute conscious resistance by tigers to Han encroachment on their habitat.
And while we might imagine what the tigers’ perspective on the establishment and
expansion of settled agriculture may have been, at this point I have to step back and
reaffirm the humanness of the story that I have told.”5
 Preface to the Second Edition xix

If I were writing that book now, I would reconsider that retreat into an anthropocen-
tric worldview. The reason is the work that others have done more recently to show the
ways in which plants and animals do have historical agency. Michael Hathaway has a
marvelous book on environmental changes in southwest China that has an impressive
chapter on China’s elephants; he begins with the section “Approaching the Question of
Elephant Agency.” Drawing on the work by Bruno Latour on “actor-network theory”
and Jeremy Prestholdt’s notion of “cumulative agency,” Hathaway concludes that the
elephants squeezed into a small corner of southern Yunnan did shape the plans and ac-
tions of humans, including the creation of a protected region for them. Human–animal
relations may appear to be about what humans want and do, but critical scholarship is
showing how much agency animals actually have in our relationship with them.6
But what about plants? How could plants possibly have “agency?” In chapter 2, I
show how mutations to both the rice plant and millet, probably occasioned by climatic
changes following the last ice age and increased solar radiation, transformed those
species from perennials to annuals, a step necessary to enable humans to plant and
harvest their seeds on an annual basis—to “farm.” Without those changes in plants,
the likelihood of farming is substantially lessened, and so too the rest of China’s
environmental history. More recently, Edmund Russell has developed the concept of
the “coevolution” of plants and animals with humans.7 He has written an essay on the
coevolution of silkworms, mulberry trees, and humans in China that I have used in
chapter 6. The concept of “coevolution” allows us to explore the multifarious ways
in which the evolutionary trajectories of silk moths and mulberry trees, in this case,
intersected with humans and how each affected the evolution of the others, humans in
China and their society included.
A final prompt for a second edition came from the translation and publication of
the first edition in Chinese.8 The process of translation was stimulating because the
translators—Professors Guan Yongqiang and Gao Lijie of Nankai University in Tian-
jin, China—are excellent and careful scholars themselves. They had many questions
that required clarification, and they caught numerous errors I had made, all of which
improved the book in its Chinese translation. I have benefited from that translation
and have incorporated the changes we made for the Chinese edition into this second
revised and updated edition.

NOTES

1. William Ruddiman, Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Cli-
mate (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016).
2. Ling Zhang, The River, the Plain, and the State: An Environmental Drama in Northern
Song China, 1048–1128 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016); David Pietz, The
Yellow River: The Problem of Water in Modern China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2015); Micah Muscolino, The Ecology of War in China: Henan Province, the Yellow
River, and Beyond, 1938–1950 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
3. J. R. McNeill, Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth
Century (New York: Norton, 2000), xxiv–xxv.
xx Preface to the Second Edition

4. In chapter 5, I take up the work of David Bello and Michael Hathaway on “environment
and identity,” both of whom show how the complex interactions between humans and their en-
vironments contribute to ethnic identity, and the ways in which nature “acts” in the construction
of those human identities. Their work has been influenced by Bruno Latour’s “Actor-Network
Theory,” or ANT. See Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-
Network Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
5. Robert B. Marks, Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt: Environment and Economy in Late Imperial
South China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 345.
6. Michael Hathaway, Environmental Winds: Making the Global in Southwest China
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013).
7. Edmund Russell, Evolutionary History: Uniting History and Biology to Understand Life
on Earth (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
8. The Chinese-language edition is 马立 博著 (关永强 高丽洁译), 中国环境史：从史前
到现代 (北京·中国人民大学出版社, 2015).
 Acknowledgments

This book is among the largest and most complex that I have attempted, and although
my name is on the title page as the author, I could not have completed the project
without the help of many other people and institutions.
For their willingness to read, critique, and comment upon the entire book manu-
script, I thank especially David Bello, Steve Davidson, Anne Kiley, John McNeill,
and Mark Selden. Numerous others were willing to respond to email queries and
phone calls or at other times and places to talk with me about sources or issues of
interpretation, and I thank them all: David Bello, David Christian, Kent Deng, Lee
Feigon, Edward Friedman, Daniel Headrick, Paul Kjellberg, Peter Levelle, Joseph
McDermott, Nicholas Menzies, Andrew Mertha, Ruth Mostern, Micah Muscolino,
Anne Osborne, Walter Parham, Peter Purdue, Cheryl Swift, Jonathan Unger, Donald
Wagner, Robert Weller, Adam Witten, and Ling Zhang. Darrin Magee was not only
willing to allow me to use a map from his dissertation, he volunteered to redraw it.
Colleagues at other colleges and universities were kind enough to invite me to visit
and present aspects of my work. I want to thank both Jim Scott for inviting me to pres-
ent parts of chapter 6 at Yale University’s Program in Agrarian Studies, and seminar
members for a lively discussion. Tom Lutze and Abby Jahiel invited me to present
aspects of my work at Illinois Wesleyan University, and Scott O’Bryan invited me to
lecture on my book at Indiana University. Edward Friedman and the East Asian Stud-
ies Program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison invited me to present parts of
chapters 5 and 7. I presented portions of chapter 7 at a conference organized in honor
of Maurice Meisner, and I want to thank those who were there for their comments,
but especially Tom Lutze and Carl Riskin. Cecily McCaffrey hosted me at Willamette
University. Johanna Waley-Cohen invited me to present a paper at a conference at
New York University, and although that was after I sent the first edition page proofs
off, drafting the paper for that conference prompted me to see aspects of my argument
more clearly. For the second edition, I have benefited additionally from comments on
the first edition by colleagues and students at Nankai University, People’s University,
and Xiamen University.
I was able to take the entire 2007–8 academic year to draft most of the book
thanks to a sabbatical leave granted to me by Whittier College, coupled with a
xxi
xxii Acknowledgments

Faculty Research Grant (HR-50349-07) from the National Endowment for the
Humanities. Additional funding has been provided by the Richard and Billie Deihl
Endowment, which funds the endowed chair that I held through 2014. I thank them
all for their financial support.
Several colleagues have graciously given me permission to use and quote from
material that they are working on but that is not yet published, and I thank them too:
Kathryn Brunston, Desmond Cheong, Hugh Clark, Jack Hayes, Jeffrey Kinzley, Pe-
ter Levelle, Setsuko Matsuzawa, Tim Sedo, Mindi Schneider, Elena Songster, Ling
Zhang, and Meng Zhang.
Students in my Imperial China class the past several years have read and com-
mented upon various drafts of the book manuscript: T. C. Collymore, Cameron Cuel-
lar, Laura Jennings, Ben Mitchell, Leah Sigler, Dillon Trites, and Victor Velasquez
(fall 2008); Melanie Abe, Andrew Choi, Matthew Evans, Bryan Herring, Korrine
Hilgeman, Avinash Jackson, Brian Mao, Cody McDermott, Melissa Samarin, Chaz
Smith, Katrina Thoreson, Andres Villapando, and Stephen Wishon (fall 2009); Cour-
teney Faught, Cookie Fuzell, Timothy Lang, Ryan Raffel, Sue Rubin, Darren Taylor,
and Matt Wiley (fall 2010). Additionally, I used selected parts of the book in a course
on world environmental history and in my East Asian and modern Chinese history
classes. I thank all those students for giving me feedback for how undergraduate stu-
dents might read and understand this book. I have also benefited from the insights and
questions from students who have used the first edition of the book in my Imperial
China course when it has been “paired” with a course on climate change taught by my
colleague Cinzia Fissore (fall 2014 and 2016), who has helped me understand more
deeply the complexities of global climate change.
At Whittier College, Joe Dmohowski, Mike Garabedian, and Cindy Bessler at
Wardman Library helped locate and bring to Whittier College numerous books and
articles from around the world. With his knowledge of Excel, Robert Olsabeck helped
me format tables and graphs. Rich Cheatham lent me his vast experience with film and
graphics when I needed to get old photos ready for digital publication. Darren Taylor
translated the table of contents of a couple of Chinese-language texts and worked
on the translation of a couple of passages. The Whittier College history department,
especially Elizabeth Sage and the current department chair, José Ortega, have been
supportive of my work and understanding of my periodic absences from campus. De-
partmental assistant Angela Olivas has provided invaluable support for both the first
and second editions. Hong Cheong at the UCLA Chinese Studies Library helped me
locate some uncataloged books in their collection that were not in the stacks.
At the press, Susan McEachern has long been a supporter of this project. As edi-
tor, not only did she read the manuscript and make suggestions for improving it, she
helped realize my hope that the book contain quite a few maps and other graphics.
Janice Braunstein oversaw copyediting and typesetting for both the first and second
editions. Susan’s assistant, Grace Baumgartner, kept the project on schedule. For the
second edition, Rebeccah Shumaker has been a tremendous help. To make several of
the maps, I used base maps from Map Resources and received help from Josh Brock in
technical support for some routines using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop to be able
to draw and print the map I wanted. Gregory Veeck, Clifton W. Pannel, Christopher
 Acknowledgments xxiii

J. Smith, and Youqin Huang gave permission to use several maps from their book
China’s Geography: Globalization and the Dynamics of Political, Economic, and
Social Change, also published by Rowman & Littlefield.
Portions of chapter 7 have been published previously in Radicalism, Revolution,
and Reform in Modern China: Essays in Honor of Maurice Meisner, and I want to
thank Lexington Press for permission to use that material. I also want to thank Cam-
bridge University Press for permission to use several images from various volumes
of Joseph Needham’s Science and Civilization in China. Several sections of this book
are based on my previously published Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt: Environment and
Economy in Late Imperial China, for which I hold the copyright.
Preparing the book for its second edition has given me the opportunity to make vari-
ous corrections. For their help in pointing out where these were needed, I would like
to thank Peter Purdue, John McNeill, Dennis Grafflin, Han Zhaoqing, and especially
professors Guan Yongqiang and Gao Lijie of Nankai University. Without the work of
generations of scholars and the help of those mentioned above, this book would not
have been possible. I thank them all from the bottom of my heart for all they have
meant to me. But in the end, this book is mine, and I take sole responsibility for what-
ever is good and right about it, but also for whatever mistakes, omissions, oversights,
or questionable interpretations or inferences remain.
Finally, my wife, Joyce P. Kaufman (who is a very productive scholar in her own
right), and I have shared the often very lonely work of composing our various books
and giving each other love, comfort, and acceptance when our unruly manuscripts
were not being kind to us. Our black Labrador, Stanton, has lain quietly by our desks
for hours waiting for that brief moment of excitement when one of us would get up
and say “Let’s go for walk!”
 Chapter 1

Introduction
Problems and Perspectives

Four thousand years ago, the place we now call China was among the most biologi-
cally rich and diverse places on earth. Today, the Asian elephant—which once thrived
throughout the region—has been displaced to the farthest reaches of China’s south-
west, the South China tiger is on the verge of extinction, the Yangzi River dolphin is
probably extinct, and one Yangzi giant soft-shell turtle in a zoo is all that remains of
that species. And those are just the “star species” we know about; hundreds of other
species have gone extinct unnoticed. Biologists estimate that nearly 40 percent of all
remaining mammal species in China are endangered, and that 70–80 percent of plant
species are threatened. This book tells the story of how and why that massive environ-
mental transformation happened.
Mostly, the story involves humans in China, and what they have done to their
environment over the past four thousand years. Paradoxically, the very biodiversity
of the region was the reason that it has supported from one-quarter to one-third of
the world’s human population at any given time, with peoples in different parts of
China exploiting the vast and diverse natural treasure trove not merely to sustain
their immediate lives but also to increase their populations. At first, the footprint of
humans was light; humans mostly hunted for sustenance, or gathered food from the
forests, grasslands, or wetlands. But with the development and subsequent spread
of agriculture, and the attendant clearance of forests for farmland that began nearly
nine thousand years ago, the effects of human population changed dramatically.
More recently, in the twentieth century, rapid industrialization and the rise of a
consumer culture accelerated the transformation and degradation of nature in China.
The “success” of the peoples of China over the past four thousand years in establish-
ing and maintaining their particular form of civilization is, then, the chief reason for
ecological change in China.
That last phrase—“in China”—is startlingly illustrated by a recent map of the range
of the tiger (Panthera tigris) published by the International Union for the Conserva-
tion of Nature for its “red list of endangered species.”1 Whereas tigers once roamed
throughout much of the space labeled “China,” by 2009 the tiger had been extirpated
from within Chinese borders (see map 1.1). That correspondence between the range
of the tiger and China’s borders is not accidental.
1
2 Chapter 1

Map 1.1. The Range of the Tiger, ca. 2009

Source: Adapted from the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, “Panthera tigris,” http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/
redlist/details/15955/0.

To be sure, natural forces—in particular climate and climate change—also drove

environmental change. But by the early 1800s, it was apparent to some Chinese that
the major cause of environmental change in their world was human action. Indeed,
by then, most of China, including the very soil itself, had been touched or worked
(and reworked) by human hands, leaving very little of “nature” natural. That which
remained pristine progressively shrank in size, and remained chiefly in places too
remote for humans to access easily—high mountains, deep river valleys, underground
rivers. In the initial decades of the twenty-first century, these places and others like
them that contain habitat for endangered species have been placed into protected na-
ture preserves and a few national parks, places that have now become space contested
between those who want to preserve biological and natural diversity and those who
want economic “development.” This book will conclude with the unresolved battles
 Introduction 3

being waged to preserve perhaps the last bit of natural beauty and biodiversity left in
China in a remote region known as the Three Parallel Rivers, in Yunnan province.
We will confront several paradoxes in this environmental history of China. On one
hand, a primary storyline concerns the ways in which the Chinese transformed their
environment (deforesting it, channeling water, moving mountains or cutting through
them, etc.) through the establishment of a particularly successful combination of fam-
ily farming with the strategic interests of the state. And, as we will see, the transfor-
mations of the Chinese environment not only were extensive but also caused episodic
and long-term ecological damage that resulted in mounting environmental crises. Yet
another storyline is how the Chinese agricultural system turned out to be exception-
ally sustainable over long periods of time: how else can we explain how land that was
farmed three thousand years ago is still being farmed today, and how rice paddies
and the waterworks to maintain them, built one thousand years ago, still produce vast
amounts of rice? To be sure, part of the answer involves the application of chemical
fertilizers, but only recently; over long centuries, Chinese farmers became exception-
ally good at recycling nutrients back into their soil.
China’s environmental history is not just the story of the ways in which the natu-
ral environment conditioned human settlement of the land, and the ways that people
then altered their environment. Certainly, the story involves the natural environment,
but it also explores the relationship of how the people who became Chinese inter-
acted with other peoples, different from them, who also inhabited the region. These
non-Chinese—who, as we will see in the coming chapters, numbered at least in the
hundreds of different peoples, tribes, and ethnicities—also derived their sustenance
from the environment, often in ways quite different from those by which the Chinese
did. Sometimes these non-Chinese were hunter-gatherers, sometimes farmers, some-
times pastoral nomads—and sometimes combinations of some or all of these. These
peoples, too, as we will see, often dramatically altered their environments; ecological
change in the part of the world we call “China” was not all brought about only by the
people we call “Chinese.” The extraordinary diversity of China’s natural environment
meant that within it were numerous ecological niches where people could, and did,
exploit the environment to sustain and reproduce themselves and their cultures.
The most successful people, at least on their own terms, turned out to be the Chi-
nese. As with any name for a contemporary people or a place that is projected back in
time (in this case, for several thousand years), numerous problems arise when using
the name “Chinese.” Simply put, there weren’t any “Chinese” when this narrative
begins; like the space we call “China,” they came into being only as a result of a very
long historical process. Sometimes they referred to themselves as Yin, Xia, Hua, Han,
Tang, or so forth, depending in part on the ruling elite who structured their political
space. For our purposes, I will refer to the stock of people who became today’s Chi-
nese as “Han Chinese.” The term “Han” comes from an early dynasty when the people
of that time referred to themselves as “Han,” as well as from current ethnographic
usage that identifies the Han ethnicity as Chinese.
With these ambiguities and caveats in mind, we will see that from their early states
in what is now north and northwest China, Chinese expanded to the east, south, and
4 Chapter 1

west, encountering the non-Chinese inhabitants of those regions with military force
backed by sophisticated social, economic, and political institutions. Humans exploited
nearly every ecosystem in some way: deserts, mountains, jungles, and even oceans that
might appear to have been uninhabited in fact turn out to have been contested border-
lands where much of China’s environmental history was fought out over millennia.2
Indeed, at various times, nomadic pastoral peoples of the steppe or the northeastern
forests so efficiently tapped their natural resources that they could mount significant
military challenges to the Chinese, sometimes even conquering and ruling them.
In this complex, interactive process engaging different peoples and their environ-
ments, many non-Chinese peoples nonetheless were eliminated, assimilated, or forced
to flee, thus allowing the Chinese to take their land and transform the environment into
Chinese-style farms. Contrary to what is often assumed, the Chinese did not expand
from a core region in the Yellow River plain of north China into a pristine wilderness.
Other people were already in that “wilderness,” people who had established ways
of supporting their populations from that natural environment. The story of China’s
environmental history in many ways thus entails the Chinese seizing of land from
peoples who were already there (peoples who, as we will see, had themselves perhaps
supplanted earlier peoples) and who had altered the “natural” environment to suit their
way of life, and then the remaking of the environment in a particularly Chinese way,
marked by settled agriculture based on farming families tilling the land and paying
taxes to a central state.
Unfortunately, we know little about these other peoples and their relationship to
the environment, largely because they either had no writing system to leave records
of their own, or because their written languages have been lost. One major exception
in all this is the Mongols, whose views toward their landscape and environment have
been captured by anthropologist Dee Mack Williams, and subsequently compared
with Chinese views. To Chinese, who were comfortable enclosing their space and
marking it off with boundaries and walls, nomadic pastoral Mongols of the inner
Asian grasslands, known as the steppe, had a much more “expansive spatial orienta-
tion,” in Williams’s words, with a significant tolerance for dry (and sometimes even
sandy) landscapes that were not “opened” by the plow for tilling.3 At various points,
we will explore Chinese–Mongol interactions and perceptions of the other, for that
relationship—which in many ways became a symbiotic one—constitutes a significant
dynamic in Chinese history that warrants address in nearly every chapter of this book.
With a few notable exceptions, then, what we know about China’s environmental
history mostly comes from Chinese sources: the Chinese had a writing system and left
records that we can interrogate for evidence about their relationship to the environment.
Archeological finds of the remains of material culture, such as pottery and building
foundations, also tell us things, and we will use evidence from those sources, too.
Mostly, however, historians have had to rely on Chinese sources. The Chinese, of
course, have told their history from their perspective, and for quite some time other
historians too have seen Chinese history from the point of view of Chinese sources.
This has lent a heroic tinge to the traditional storyline of Chinese history: Chinese
spread the benefits of their high civilization to less advanced peoples, bringing them
within the fold of Chinese civilization. The Chinese saw themselves as the font of
Another random document with
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 BYRON AND WORDSWORTH

The London Weekly Review.]

[April 5, 1828.

I am much surprised at Lord Byron’s haste to return a volume of

Spenser, which was lent him by Mr. Hunt, and at his apparent
indifference to the progress and (if he pleased) advancement of
poetry up to the present day. Did he really think that all genius was
concentred in his own time, or in his own bosom? With his pride of
ancestry, had he no curiosity to explore the heraldry of intellect? or
did he regard the Muse as an upstart—a mere modern bluestocking
and fine lady? I am afraid that high birth and station, instead of
being (as Mr. Burke predicates,) ‘a cure for a narrow and selfish
mind,’ only make a man more full of himself, and, instead of
enlarging and refining his views, impatient of any but the most
inordinate and immediate stimulus. I do not recollect, in all Lord
Byron’s writings, a single recurrence to a feeling or object that had
ever excited an interest before; there is no display of natural affection
—no twining of the heart round any object: all is the restless and
disjointed effect of first impressions, of novelty, contrast, surprise,
grotesque costume, or sullen grandeur. His beauties are the houris of
Paradise, the favourites of a seraglio, the changing visions of a
feverish dream. His poetry, it is true, is stately and dazzling, arched
like a rainbow, of bright and lovely hues, painted on the cloud of his
own gloomy temper—perhaps to disappear as soon! It is easy to
account for the antipathy between him and Mr. Wordsworth. Mr.
Wordsworth’s poetical mistress is a Pamela; Lord Byron’s an Eastern
princess or a Moorish maid. It is the extrinsic, the uncommon that
captivates him, and all the rest he holds in sovereign contempt. This
is the obvious result of pampered luxury and high-born sentiments.
The mind, like the palace in which it has been brought up, admits
none but new and costly furniture. From a scorn of homely
simplicity, and a surfeit of the artificial, it has but one resource left in
exotic manners and preternatural effect. So we see in novels, written
by ladies of quality, all the marvellous allurements of a fairy tale,
jewels, quarries of diamonds, giants, magicians, condors and ogres.
[55]
The author of the Lyrical Ballads describes the lichen on the rock,
the withered fern, with some peculiar feeling that he has about them:
the author of Childe Harold describes the stately cypress, or the
fallen column, with the feeling that every schoolboy has about them.
The world is a grown schoolboy, and relishes the latter most. When
Rousseau called out—‘Ah! voila de la pervenche!’ in a transport of
joy at sight of the periwinkle, because he had first seen this little blue
flower in company with Madame Warens thirty years before, I
cannot help thinking, that any astonishment expressed at the sight of
a palm-tree, or even of Pompey’s Pillar, is vulgar compared to this!
Lord Byron, when he does not saunter down Bond-street, goes into
the East: when he is not occupied with the passing topic, he goes
back two thousand years, at one poetic, gigantic stride! But instead of
the sweeping mutations of empire, and the vast lapses of duration,
shrunk up into an antithesis, commend me to the ‘slow and creeping
foot of time,’ in the commencement of Ivanhoe, where the jester and
the swine-herd watch the sun going down behind the low-stunted
trees of the forest, and their loitering and impatience make the
summer’s day seem so long, that we wonder how we have ever got to
the end of the six hundred years that have passed since! That where
the face of nature has changed, time should have rolled on its course,
is but a common-place discovery; but that where all seems the same,
(the long rank grass, and the stunted oaks, and the innocent pastoral
landscape,) all should have changed—this is to me the burthen and
the mystery. The ruined pile is a memento and a monument to him
that reared it—oblivion has here done but half its work; but what
yearnings, what vain conflicts with its fate come over the soul in the
other case, which makes man seem like a grasshopper—an insect of
the hour, and all that he is, or that others have been—nothing!
 ON CANT AND HYPOCRISY

A Fragment
The London Weekly Review.]
[December 6, 1828.
‘If to do were as easy as to teach others what were good to be done, chapels had
been churches, and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces.’

Mr. Addison, it is said, was fond of tippling; and Curl, it is added,

when he called on him in the morning, used to ask as a particular
favour for a glass of Canary, by way of ingratiating himself, and that
the other might have a pretence to join him and finish the bottle. He
fell a martyr to this habit, and yet (some persons more nice than wise
exclaim,) he desired that the young Earl of Warwick might attend
him on his death-bed, ‘to see how a Christian could die!’ I see no
inconsistency nor hypocrisy in this. A man may be a good Christian,
a sound believer, and a sincere lover of virtue, and have,
notwithstanding, one or more failings. If he had recommended it to
others to get drunk, then I should have said he was a hypocrite, and
that his pretended veneration for the Christian religion was a mere
cloak put on to suit the purposes of fashion or convenience. His
doing what it condemned was no proof of any such thing: ‘The spirit
was willing, but the flesh was weak.’ He is a hypocrite who professes
what he does not believe; not he who does not practice all he wishes
or approves. It might on the same ground be argued, that a man is a
hypocrite who admires Raphael or Shakespeare, because he cannot
paint like the one, or write like the other. If any one really despised
what he affected outwardly to admire, this would be hypocrisy. If he
affected to admire it a great deal more than he really did, this would
be cant. Sincerity has to do with the connexion between our words
and thoughts, and not between our belief and actions. The last
constantly belie the strongest convictions and resolutions in the best
of men; it is only the base and dishonest who give themselves credit
with their tongue, for sentiments and opinions which in their hearts
they disown.
I do not therefore think that the old theological maxim—‘The
greater the sinner, the greater the saint’—is so utterly unfounded.
There is some mixture of truth in it. For as long as man is composed
of two parts, body and soul; and while these are allowed to pull
different ways, I see no reason why, in proportion to the length the
one goes, the opposition or reaction of the other should not be more
violent. It is certain, for example, that no one makes such good
resolutions as the sot and the gambler in their moments of
repentance, or can be more impressed with the horrors of their
situation;—should this disposition, instead of a transient, idle pang,
by chance become lasting, who can be supposed to feel the beauty of
temperance and economy more, or to look back with greater
gratitude to their escape from the trammels of vice and passion?
Would the ingenious and elegant author of the Spectator feel less
regard for the Scriptures, because they denounced in pointed terms
the infirmity that ‘most easily beset him,’ that was the torment of his
life, and the cause of his death? Such reasoning would be true, if man
was a simple animal or a logical machine, and all his faculties and
impulses were in strict unison; instead of which they are eternally at
variance, and no one hates or takes part against himself more
heartily or heroically than does the same individual. Does he not pass
sentence on his own conduct? Is not his conscience both judge and
accuser? What else is the meaning of all our resolutions against
ourselves, as well as of our exhortations to others? Video meliora
proboque, deteriora sequor, is not the language of hypocrisy, but of
human nature.
The hypocrisy of priests has been a butt for ridicule in all ages; but
I am not sure that there has not been more wit than philosophy in it.
A priest, it is true, is obliged to affect a greater degree of sanctity than
ordinary men, and probably more than he possesses; and this is so
far, I am willing to allow, hypocrisy and solemn grimace. But I
cannot admit, that though he may exaggerate, or even make an
ostentatious display of religion and virtue through habit and spiritual
pride, that this is a proof he has not these sentiments in his heart, or
that his whole behaviour is the mere acting of a part. His character,
his motives, are not altogether pure and sincere: are they therefore
all false and hollow? No such thing. It is contrary to all our
observation and experience so to interpret it. We all wear some
disguise—make some professions—use some artifice to set ourselves
off as being better than we are; and yet it is not denied that we have
some good intentions and praiseworthy qualities at bottom, though
we may endeavour to keep some others that we think less to our
credit as much as possible in the back-ground:—why then should we
not extend the same favourable construction to monks and friars,
who may be sometimes caught tripping as well as other men—with
less excuse, no doubt; but if it is also with greater remorse of
conscience, which probably often happens, their pretensions are not
all downright, barefaced imposture. Their sincerity, compared with
that of other men, can only be judged of by the proportion between
the degree of virtue they profess, and that which they practice, or at
least carefully seek to realise. To conceive it otherwise, is to insist
that characters must be all perfect, or all vicious—neither of which
suppositions is even possible. If a clergyman is notoriously a
drunkard, a debauchee, a glutton, or a scoffer, then for him to lay
claim at the same time to extraordinary inspirations of faith or grace,
is both scandalous and ridiculous. The scene between the Abbot and
the poor brother in the ‘Duenna’ is an admirable exposure of this
double-faced dealing. But because a parson has a relish for the good
things of this life, or what is commonly called a liquorish tooth in his
head, (beyond what he would have it supposed by others, or even by
himself,) that he has therefore no fear or belief of the next, I hold for
a crude and vulgar prejudice. If a poor half-starved parish priest pays
his court to an olla podrida, or a venison pasty, with uncommon
gusto, shall we say that he has no other sentiments in offering his
devotions to a crucifix, or in counting his beads? I see no more
ground for such an inference, than for affirming that Handel was not
in earnest when he sat down to compose a Symphony, because he
had at the same time perhaps a bottle of cordials in his cupboard; or
that Raphael was not entitled to the epithet of divine, because he was
attached to the Fornarina! Everything has its turn in this chequered
scene of things, unless we prevent it from taking its turn by over-
rigid conditions, or drive men to despair or the most callous
effrontery, by erecting a standard of perfection, to which no one can
conform in reality! Thomson, in his ‘Castle of Indolence,’ (a subject
on which his pen ran riot,) has indulged in rather a free description
of ‘a little round, fat, oily man of God—
‘Who shone all glittering with ungodly dew,
If a tight damsel chanced to trippen by;
Which, when observed, he shrunk into his mew,
And straight would recollect his piety anew.’

Now, was the piety in this case the less real, because it had been
forgotten for a moment? Or even if this motive should not prove the
strongest in the end, would this therefore show that it was none,
which is necessary to the argument here combated, or to make out
our little plump priest a very knave! A priest may be honest, and yet
err; as a woman may be modest, and yet half-inclined to be a rake. So
the virtue of prudes may be suspected, though not their sincerity.
The strength of their passions may make them more conscious of
their weakness, and more cautious of exposing themselves; but not
more to blind others than as a guard upon themselves. Again,
suppose a clergyman hazards a jest upon sacred subjects, does it
follow that he does not believe a word of the matter? Put the case
that any one else, encouraged by his example, takes up the banter or
levity, and see what effect it will have upon the reverend divine. He
will turn round like a serpent trod upon, with all the vehemence and
asperity of the most bigoted orthodoxy. Is this dictatorial and
exclusive spirit then put on merely as a mask and to browbeat
others? No; but he thinks he is privileged to trifle with the subject
safely himself, from the store of evidence he has in reserve, and from
the nature of his functions; but he is afraid of serious consequences
being drawn from what others might say, or from his seeming to
countenance it; and the moment the Church is in danger, or his own
faith brought in question, his attachment to each becomes as visible
as his hatred to those who dare to impugn either the one or the other.
A woman’s attachment to her husband is not to be suspected, if she
will allow no one to abuse him but herself! It has been remarked,
that with the spread of liberal opinions, or a more general scepticism
on articles of faith, the clergy and religious persons in general have
become more squeamish and jealous of any objections to their
favourite doctrines: but this is what must follow in the natural course
of things—the resistance being always in proportion to the danger;
and arguments and books that were formerly allowed to pass
unheeded, because it was supposed impossible they could do any
mischief, are now denounced or prohibited with the most zealous
vigilance, from a knowledge of the contagious nature of their
influence and contents. So in morals, it is obvious that the greatest
nicety of expression and allusion must be observed, where the
manners are the most corrupt, and the imagination most easily
excited, not out of mere affectation, but as a dictate of common sense
and decency.
One of the finest remarks that has been made in modern times, is
that of Lord Shaftesbury, that there is no such thing as a perfect
Theist, or an absolute Atheist; that whatever may be the general
conviction entertained on the subject, the evidence is not and cannot
be at all times equally present to the mind; that even if it were, we
are not in the same humour to receive it: a fit of the gout, a shower of
rain shakes our best-established conclusions; and according to
circumstances and the frame of mind we are in, our belief varies
from the most sanguine enthusiasm to lukewarm indifference, or the
most gloomy despair. There is a point of conceivable faith which
might prevent any lapse from virtue, and reconcile all contrarieties
between theory and practice; but this is not to be looked for in the
ordinary course of nature, and is reserved for the abodes of the blest.
Here, ‘upon this bank and shoal of time,’ the utmost we can hope to
attain is, a strong habitual belief in the excellence of virtue, or the
dispensations of Providence; and the conflict of the passions, and
their occasional mastery over us, far from disproving or destroying
this general, rational conviction, often fling us back more forcibly
upon it, and like other infidelities and misunderstandings, produce
all the alternate remorse and raptures of repentance and
reconciliation.
It has been frequently remarked that the most obstinate heretic or
confirmed sceptic, witnessing the service of the Roman Catholic
church, the elevation of the host amidst the sounds of music, the
pomp of ceremonies, the embellishments of art, feels himself spell-
bound: and is almost persuaded to become a renegade to his reason
or his religion. Even in hearing a vespers chaunted on the stage, or in
reading an account of a torch-light procession in a romance, a
superstitious awe creeps over the frame, and we are momentarily
charmed out of ourselves. When such is the obvious and involuntary
influence of circumstances on the imagination, shall we say that a
monkish recluse surrounded from his childhood by all this pomp, a
stranger to any other faith, who has breathed no other atmosphere,
and all whose meditations are bent on this one subject both by
interest and habit and duty, is to be set down as a rank and heartless
mountebank in the professions he makes of belief in it, because his
thoughts may sometimes wander to forbidden subjects, or his feet
stumble on forbidden ground? Or shall not the deep shadows of the
woods in Vallombrosa enhance the solemnity of this feeling, or the
icy horrors of the Grand Chartreux add to its elevation and its purity?
To argue otherwise is to misdeem of human nature, and to limit its
capacities for good or evil by some narrow-minded standard of our
own. Man is neither a God nor a brute; but there is a prosaic and a
poetical side to everything concerning him, and it is as impossible
absolutely and for a constancy to exclude either one or the other
from the mind, as to make him live without air or food. The ideal, the
empire of thought and aspiration after truth and good, is inseparable
from the nature of an intellectual being—what right have we then to
catch at every strife which in the mortified professors of religion the
spirit wages with the flesh as grossly vicious, or at every doubt, the
bare suggestion of which fills them with consternation and despair,
as a proof of the most glaring hypocrisy? The grossnesses of religion
and its stickling for mere forms as its essence, have given a handle,
and a just one, to its impugners. At the feast of Ramadan (says
Voltaire) the Mussulmans wash and pray five times a day, and then
fall to cutting one another’s throats again with the greatest
deliberation and good-will. The two things, I grant, are sufficiently at
variance; but they are, I contend, equally sincere in both. The
Mahometans are savages, but they are not the less true believers—
they hate their enemies as heartily as they revere the Koran. This,
instead of showing the fallacy of the ideal principle, shows its
universality and indestructible essence. Let a man be as bad as he
will, as little refined as possible, and indulge whatever hurtful
passions or gross vices he thinks proper, these cannot occupy the
whole of his time; and in the intervals between one scoundrel action
and another he may and must have better thoughts, and may have
recourse to those of religion (true or false) among the number,
without in this being guilty of hypocrisy or of making a jest of what is
considered as sacred. This, I take it, is the whole secret of
Methodism, which is a sort of modern vent for the ebullitions of the
spirit through the gaps of unrighteousness.
We often see that a person condemns in another the very thing he
is guilty of himself. Is this hypocrisy? It may, or it may not. If he
really feels none of the disgust and abhorrence he expresses, this is
quackery and impudence. But if he really expresses what he feels,
(and he easily may, for it is the abstract idea he contemplates in the
case of another, and the immediate temptation to which he yields in
his own, so that he probably is not even conscious of the identity or
connexion between the two,) then this is not hypocrisy, but want of
strength and keeping in the moral sense. All morality consists in
squaring our actions and sentiments to our ideas of what is fit and
proper; and it is the incessant struggle and alternate triumph of the
two principles, the ideal and the physical, that keeps up this ‘mighty
coil and pudder’ about vice and virtue, and is one great source of all
the good and evil in the world. The mind of man is like a clock that is
always running down, and requires to be as constantly wound up.
The ideal principle is the master-key that winds it up, and without
which it would come to a stand: the sensual and selfish feelings are
the dead weights that pull it down to the gross and grovelling. Till the
intellectual faculty is destroyed, (so that the mind sees nothing
beyond itself, or the present moment,) it is impossible to have all
brutal depravity: till the material and physical are done away with,
(so that it shall contemplate everything from a purely spiritual and
disinterested point of view,) it is impossible to have all virtue. There
must be a mixture of the two, as long as man is compounded of
opposite materials, a contradiction and an eternal competition for
the mastery. I by no means think a single bad action condemns a
man, for he probably condemns it as much as you do; nor a single
bad habit, for he is probably trying all his life to get rid of it. A man is
only thoroughly profligate when he has lost the sense of right and
wrong; or a thorough hypocrite, when he has not even the wish to be
what he appears. The greatest offence against virtue is to speak ill of
it. To recommend certain things is worse than to practise them.
There may be an excuse for the last in the frailty of passion; but the
former can arise from nothing but an utter depravity of disposition.
Any one may yield to temptation, and yet feel a sincere love and
aspiration after virtue: but he who maintains vice in theory, has not
even the conception or capacity for virtue in his mind. Men err:
fiends only make a mock at goodness.
 THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

The London Weekly Review.]

[December 13, 1828.

We sometimes deceive ourselves, and think worse of human

nature than it deserves, in consequence of judging of character from
names, and classes, and modes of life. No one is simply and
absolutely any one thing, though he may be branded with it as a
name. Some persons have expected to see his crimes written in the
face of a murderer, and have been disappointed because they did not,
as if this impeached the distinction between virtue and vice. Not at
all. The circumstance only showed that the man was other things,
and had other feelings besides those of a murderer. If he had nothing
else,—if he had fed on nothing else,—if he had dreamt of nothing
else, but schemes of murder, his features would have expressed
nothing else: but this perfection in vice is not to be expected from the
contradictory and mixed nature of our motives. Humanity is to be
met with in a den of robbers; nay, modesty in a brothel. Even among
the most abandoned of the other sex, there is not unfrequently found
to exist (contrary to all that is generally supposed) one strong and
individual attachment, which remains unshaken to the last. Virtue
may be said to steal, like a guilty thing, into the secret haunts of vice
and infamy; it clings to their devoted victim, and will not be driven
quite away. Nothing can destroy the human heart. Again, there is a
heroism in crime, as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have also their
altars and their religion. This makes nothing in their favour, but is a
proof of the heroical disinterestedness of man’s nature, and that
whatever he does, he must fling a dash of romance and sublimity into
it; just as some grave biographer has said of Shakespeare, that ‘even
when he killed a calf, he made a speech and did it in a great style.’
 It is then impossible to get rid of this original distinction and
contradictory bias, and to reduce everything to the system of French
levity and Epicurean indifference. Wherever there is a capacity of
conceiving of things as different from what they are, there must be a
principle of taste and selection—a disposition to make them better,
and a power to make them worse. Ask a Parisian milliner if she does
not think one bonnet more becoming than another—a Parisian
dancing-master if French grace is not better than English
awkwardness—a French cook if all sauces are alike—a French
blacklegs if all throws are equal on the dice? It is curious that the
French nation restrict rigid rules and fixed principles to cookery and
the drama, and maintain that the great drama of human life is
entirely a matter of caprice and fancy. No one will assert that
Raphael’s histories, that Claude’s landscapes are not better than a
daub: but if the expression in one of Raphael’s faces is better than
the most mean and vulgar, how resist the consequence that the
feeling so expressed is better also? It does not appear to me that all
faces or all actions are alike. If goodness were only a theory, it were a
pity it should be lost to the world. There are a number of things, the
idea of which is a clear gain to the mind. Let people, for instance, rail
at friendship, genius, freedom, as long as they will—the very names
of these despised qualities are better than anything else that could be
substituted for them, and embalm even the most envenomed satire
against them. It is no small consideration that the mind is capable
even of feigning such things. So I would contend against that
reasoning which would have it thought that if religion is not true,
there is no difference between mankind and the beasts that perish;—
I should say, that this distinction is equally proved, if religion is
supposed to be a mere fabrication of the human mind; the capacity
to conceive it makes the difference. The idea alone of an over-ruling
Providence, or of a future state, is as much a distinctive mark of a
superiority of nature, as the invention of the mathematics, which are
true,—or of poetry, which is a fable. Whatever the truth or falsehood
of our speculations, the power to make them is peculiar to ourselves.
The contrariety and warfare of different faculties and dispositions
within us has not only given birth to the Manichean and Gnostic
heresies, and to other superstitions of the East, but will account for
many of the mummeries and dogmas both of Popery and Calvinism,
—confession, absolution, justification by faith, &c.; which, in the
hopelessness of attaining perfection, and our dissatisfaction with
ourselves for falling short of it, are all substitutes for actual virtue,
and an attempt to throw the burthen of a task, to which we are
unequal or only half disposed, on the merits of others, or on outward
forms, ceremonies, and professions of faith. Hence the crowd of
‘Eremites and friars,
White, black, and grey, with all their trumpery.’

If we do not conform to the law, we at least acknowledge the

jurisdiction of the court. A person does wrong; he is sorry for it; and
as he still feels himself liable to error, he is desirous to make
atonement as well as he can, by ablutions, by tithes, by penance, by
sacrifices, or other voluntary demonstrations of obedience, which are
in his power, though his passions are not, and which prove that his
will is not refractory, and that his understanding is right towards
God. The stricter tenets of Calvinism, which allow of no medium
between grace and reprobation, and doom man to eternal
punishment for every breach of the moral law, as an equal offence
against infinite truth and justice, proceed (like the paradoxical
doctrine of the Stoics) from taking a half-view of this subject, and
considering man as amenable only to the dictates of his
understanding and his conscience, and not excusable from the
temptations and frailty of human ignorance and passion. The mixing
up of religion and morality together, or the making us accountable
for every word, thought, or action, under no less a responsibility than
our everlasting future welfare or misery, has also added incalculably
to the difficulties of self-knowledge, has superinduced a violent and
spurious state of feeling, and made it almost impossible to
distinguish the boundaries between the true and false, in judging of
human conduct and motives. A religious man is afraid of looking into
the state of his soul, lest at the same time he should reveal it to
Heaven; and tries to persuade himself that by shutting his eyes to his
true character and feelings, they will remain a profound secret both
here and hereafter. This is a strong engine and irresistible
inducement to self-deception; and the more zealous any one is in his
convictions of the truth of religion, the more we may suspect the
sincerity of his pretensions to piety and morality.
 Thus, though I think there is very little downright hypocrisy in the
world, I do think there is a great deal of cant—‘cant religious, cant
political, cant literary,’ &c. as Lord Byron said. Though few people
have the face to set up for the very thing they in their hearts despise,
we almost all want to be thought better than we are, and affect a
greater admiration or abhorrence of certain things than we really
feel. Indeed, some degree of affectation is as necessary to the mind as
dress is to the body; we must overact our part in some measure, in
order to produce any effect at all. There was formerly the two hours’
sermon, the long-winded grace, the nasal drawl, the uplifted hands
and eyes; all which, though accompanied with some corresponding
emotion, expressed more than was really felt, and were in fact
intended to make up for the conscious deficiency. As our interest in
anything wears out with time and habit, we exaggerate the outward
symptoms of zeal as mechanical helps to devotion, dwell the longer
on our words as they are less felt, and hence the very origin of the
term, cant. The cant of sentimentality has succeeded to that of
religion. There is a cant of humanity, of patriotism and loyalty—not
that people do not feel these emotions, but they make too great a fuss
about them, and drawl out the expression of them till they tire
themselves and others. There is a cant about Shakespeare. There is a
cant about Political Economy just now. In short, there is and must be
a cant about everything that excites a considerable degree of
attention and interest, and that people would be thought to know
and care rather more about than they actually do. Cant is the
voluntary overcharging or prolongation of a real sentiment;
hypocrisy is the setting up a pretension to a feeling you never had
and have no wish for. Mr. Coleridge is made up of cant, that is, of
mawkish affectation and sensibility; but he has not sincerity enough
to be a hypocrite, that is, he has not hearty dislike or contempt
enough for anything, to give the lie to his puling professions of
admiration and esteem for it. The fuss that Mr. Liberal Snake makes
about Political Economy is not cant, but what Mr. Theodore Hook
politely calls humbug; he himself is hardly the dupe of his own
pompous reasoning, but he wishes to make it the stalking-horse of
his ambition or interest to sneak into a place and curry favour with
the Government....
 POETRY

The Atlas.]
[March 8, 1829.

As there are two kinds of rhyme, one that is rhyme to the ear, and
another to the eye only; so there may be said to be two kinds of
poetry, one that is a description of objects to those who have never
seen or but slightly studied them; the other is a description of objects
addressed to those who have seen and are intimately acquainted with
them, and expressing the feeling which is the result of such
knowledge. It is needless to add that the first kind of poetry is
comparatively superficial and common-place; the last profound,
lofty, nay often divine. Take an example (one out of a thousand) from
Shakspeare. In enumerating the wished-for contents of her basket of
flowers, Perdita in the Winter’s Tale mentions among others——
‘Daffodils
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes
Or Cytherea’s breath; pale primroses
That die unmarried ere they can behold
Bright Phœbus in his strength, a malady
Most incident to maids.’

This passage which knocks down John Bull with its perfumed and
melting softness, and savours of ‘that fine madness which our first
poets had,’ is a mystery, an untranslateable language, to all France:
Racine could not have conceived what it was about—the stupidest
Englishman feels a certain pride and pleasure in it. What a privilege
(if that were all) to be born on this the cloudy and poetical side of the
Channel! We may in part clear up this contradiction in tastes by the
clue above given. The French are more apt at taking the patterns of
their ideas from words; we, who are slower and heavier, are obliged
to look closer at things before we can pronounce upon them at all,
which in the end perhaps opens a larger field both of observation and
fancy. Thus the phrase ‘violets dim,’ to those who have never seen
the object, or who, having paid no attention to it, refer to the
description for their notion of it, seems to convey a slur rather than a
compliment, dimness being no beauty in itself; so this part of the
story would not have been ventured upon in French or tinsel poetry.
But to those who have seen, and been as it were enamoured of the
little hedge-row candidate for applause, looking at it again and again
(as misers contemplate their gold—as fine ladies hang over their
jewels), till its image has sunk into the soul, what other word is there
that (far from putting the reader out of conceit with it) so well recals
its deep purple glow, its retired modesty, its sullen, conscious
beauty? Those who have not seen the flower cannot form an idea of
its character, nor understand the line without it. Its aspect is dull,
obtuse, faint, absorbed; but at the same time soft, luxurious, proud,
and full of meaning. People who look at nature without being
sensible to these distinctions and contrarieties of feeling, had better
(instead of the flower) look only at the label on the stalk.
Connoisseurs in French wines pretend to know all these depths and
refinements of taste, though connoisseurs in French poetry pretend
to know them not. To return to our text——
‘Violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes
Or Cytherea’s breath.’

How bizarre! cries one hypercritic. What far-fetched metaphors!

exclaims another. We shall not dwell on the allusion to ‘Cytherea’s
breath,’ it is obvious enough: but how can the violet’s smell be said to
be ‘sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes?’ Oh! honeyed words, how ill
understood! And is there no true and rooted analogy between our
different sensations, as well as a positive and literal identity? Is there
not a sugared, melting, half-sleepy look in some eyelids, like the
luscious, languid smell of flowers? How otherwise express that air of
scorn and tenderness which breathes from them? Is there not a
balmy dew upon them which one would kiss off? Speak, ye lovers! if
any such remain in these degenerate days to take the part of genuine
poetry against cold, barren criticism; for poetry is nothing but an
intellectual love——Nature is the poet’s mistress, and the heart in his
case lends words and harmonious utterance to the tongue.——Again,
how full of truth and pity is the turn which is given to the description
of the pale and faded primrose, watching for the sun’s approach as
for the torch of Hymen! Milton has imitated this not so well in
‘cowslips wan that hang the pensive head.’ Cowslips are of a gold
colour, rather than wan. In speaking of the daffodils, it seems as if
our poet had been struck with these ‘lowly children of the ground’ on
their first appearance, and seeing what bright and unexpected guests
they were at that cold, comfortless season, wondered how ‘they came
before the swallow (the harbinger of summer) dared,’ and being the
only lovely thing in nature, fancied the winds of March were taken
with them, and tamed their fury at the sight. No one but a poet who
has spent his youth in the company of nature could so describe it, as
no reader who has not experienced the same elementary sensations,
their combinations and contrasts, can properly enter into it when so
described. The finest poetry, then, is not a paradox nor a trite
paraphrase; but a bold and happy enunciation of truths and feelings
deeply implanted in the mind——Apollo, the god of poetry and day,
evolving the thoughts of the breast, as he does the seed from the
frozen earth, or enables the flower to burst its folds. Poetry is,
indeed, a fanciful structure; but a fanciful structure raised on the
ground-work of the strongest and most intimate associations of our
ideas: otherwise, it is good for nothing, vox et preterea nihil. A literal
description goes for nothing in poetry, a pure fiction is of as little
worth; but it is the extreme beauty and power of an impression with
all its accompaniments, or the very intensity and truth of feeling, that
pushes the poet over the verge of matter-of-fact, and justifies him in
resorting to the licence of fiction to express what without his ‘winged
words’ must have remained for ever untold. Thus the feeling of the
contrast between the roughness and bleakness of the winds of March
and the tenderness and beauty of the flowers of spring is already in
the reader’s mind, if he be an observer of nature: the poet, to show
the utmost extent and conceivable effect of this contrast, feigns that
the winds themselves are sensible of it and smit with the beauty on
which they commit such rude assaults. Lord Byron, whose
imagination was not of this compound character, and more wilful
than natural, produced splendid exaggerations. Mr. Shelley, who felt
the want of originality without the power to supply it, distorted every
thing from what it was, and his pen produced only abortions. The
one would say that the sun was a ‘ball of dazzling fire;’ the other, not
knowing what to say, but determined ‘to elevate and surprize,’ would
swear that it was black. This latter class of poetry may be
denominated the Apocalyptical.
 ENGLISH GRAMMAR

The Atlas.]
[March 15, 1829.

This is one of those subjects on which the human understanding

has played the fool, almost as egregiously, though with less dire
consequences, than on many others; or rather one on which it has
not chosen to exert itself at all, being hoodwinked and led blindfold
by mere precedent and authority. Scholars who have made and
taught from English grammars were previously and systematically
initiated in the Greek and Latin tongues, so that they have, without
deigning to notice the difference, taken the rules of the latter and
applied them indiscriminately and dogmatically to the former. As
well might they pretend that there is a dual number in the Latin
language because there is one in the Greek.
The Definitions alone are able to corrupt a whole generation of
ingenuous youth. They seem calculated for no other purpose than to
mystify and stultify the understanding, and to inoculate it betimes
with a due portion of credulity and verbal sophistry. After repeating
them by rote, to maintain that two and two makes five is easy, and a
thing of course. What appears most extraordinary is that
notwithstanding the complete exposure of their fallacy and nonsense
by Horne Tooke and others, the same system and method of
instruction should be persisted in; and that grammar succeeds
grammar and edition edition, re-echoing the same point-blank
contradictions and shallow terms. Establishments and endowments
of learning (which subsist on a ‘foregone conclusion’) may have
something to do with it; independently of which, and for each
person’s individual solace, the more senseless the absurdity and the
longer kept up, the more reluctant does the mind seem to part with
it, whether in the greatest things or mere trifles and technicalities;
for in the latter, as the retracting an error could produce no startling
sensation, and be accompanied with no redeeming enthusiasm, its
detection must be a pure loss and pitiful mortification. One might
suppose, that out of so many persons as have their attention directed
to this subject, some few would find out their mistake and protest
against the common practice; but the greater the number of
professional labourers in the vineyard, who seek not truth but a
livelihood, and can pay with words more currently than with things,
the less chance must there be of this, since the majority will always
set their faces against it, and insist upon the old Mumpsimus in
preference to the new Sumpsimus. A schoolmaster who should go so
far out of his way as to take the Diversions of Purley for a text-book,
would be regarded by his brethren of the rod as ‘a man of Ind,’ and
would soon have the dogs of the village bark at him. It is said without
blushing, by both masters and ushers who do not chuse to be ‘wise
above what is written,’ that a noun is the name of a thing, i.e.
substance, as if love, honour, colour, were the names of substances.
An adjective is defined to be the name of a quality; and yet in the
expressions, a gold snuff-box, a wooden spoon, an iron chest, &c.,
the words gold, wooden, iron, are allowed by all these profound
writers, grammarians, and logicians, to be essentially adjectives. A
verb is likewise defined to be a word denoting being, action, or
suffering; and yet the words being, action, suffering (or passion), are
all substantives; so that these words cannot be supposed to have any
reference to the things whose names they bear, if it be the peculiar
and sole office of the verb to denote them. If a system were made in
burlesque and purposely to call into question and expose its own
nakedness, it could not go beyond this, which is gravely taught in all
seminaries, and patiently learnt by all school-boys as an exercise and
discipline of the intellectual faculties. Again, it is roundly asserted
that there are six cases (why not seven?) in the English language;
and a case is defined to be a peculiar termination or inflection added
to a noun to show its position in the sentence. Now in the Latin
language there are no doubt a number of cases, inasmuch as there
are a number of inflections;[56] and for the same reason (if words
have a meaning) in the English Language there are none, or only one,
the genitive; because if we except this, there is no inflection or
variety whatever in the terminations. Thus to instance in the present