Bulletin of Catholic University of Peking

THE IMPORTANCE OF HIGHER EDUCATION TO THE CATHOLIC MISSIONS OF CHINA

Dom Sylvester

HE celebrated authority on mis-

sion problems, Dr. Schmidlin, has renewed an opinion first proposed in 1913, that the conversion of the world depends less on the conversion of the masses than on the conversion of the leaders. He states that we are witnessing to-day a psychic revolution among people of other races. He believes that this is the psychological moment for a concentration on the development of mission universities. This opinion is in striking agreement with that which Dr. John Ferguson, a pioneer educator of China, recently ex-

pressed on the occasion of his fortieth .

anniversary in China.

Regarding the “psychic revolution,’’ Dr. Ferguson says: ‘‘The general mass of the agrarian classes remains as bound to the soil as it has always been, but in the cities of every part of the country, there have been great changes. One may meet young men and women who are living in the Utopia of their own imaginings—a Socialistic Heaven. Others are living in an up-to-date England, France, Japan or America, and make all their mental comparisons between China as it now exists, and what it will be when it adopts the political formule of their favorite country. Others are living in the times of the American or French

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Healy, OSB.

Revolution. Many of the old scholarly class are still living in the age of the Book of Changes. One of the most prominent military leaders has spent his leisure for years in studying the philosophy of the Tao Te King and the military wisdom of Sun Tzu.” Dr. Ferguson calls attention to what was accomplished in Japan by a small group of energetic leaders, and then declares that the same procedure must be followed in China: ‘‘....the more enlightened part of China’s population must come to an agreement on a common policy for progressive action, and must then take upon itself the burden of lifting up the mass of the people to a higher level.’’ The means which he proposes, is education. ‘Fully and unreservedly,’’ he says, “I believe in education as the greatest need of China ....China must govern herself, and must control her own destinies; the surest and quickest way for her to be able to do so is through the education of leaders who will in turn train the masses.”

It is worthy of note that such a complete harmony of views should exist in two such authorities: the one, a student of mission problems in a German University; the other, a man active during a period of forty years in the educational, political, and sociaj