Since the Accounting: A Chronicle of the Roman Khanate

Chapter 302 Have the British Lost Their Self-Confidence?
The theories of these people provided Guo Kang with sufficient reasons and inspired him a lot—for example, there is no need to go into too much detail about propaganda and explanation.

These "theories" can justify themselves.The point is not whether the evidence is sufficient or whether the logical argument is reasonable, but whether it can improve social efficiency and promote national development.

After all, these facts prove that whether it is Europe in the Enlightenment era or China in the 20th century, the "guiding theory" adopted is full of violent theories.But this did not prevent them from developing rapidly and finally overtaking them.

An example can be said to be a special case of a certain civilization.But the fact that the two civilizations whose positions were completely opposite and have been advocating each other is the same, should be enough to prove many problems.

These philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment did have some concepts about the East and had some understanding of them.At least they really know the advantages of the imperial examination system and the bureaucratic system, and they also understand that China has a long history, and they can't even make a mistake in the detailed judgment of "Yongzheng is more industrious than other monarchs"... But the China they know is still Very one-sided, the judgments made and inferred conclusions often deviate greatly from the facts.

In the end, China is just an argument.European thinkers, when criticizing Aristotle, still use Plato's thinking to praise China as an ideal country.Even when they advocated Confucius, they still couldn't get rid of the way of thinking they learned from the Greeks.The China they praise is, in the final analysis, just a fictionalized perfect country that conforms to European ideals based on traditional European philosophy and values.

In the same way, when Chinese thinkers criticized Confucius, they also thought of Confucianism, praising Europe as a moral and efficient civilized world.Even when they advocated the ancient Greek philosophers, they still failed to get rid of China's own way of thinking.The Europe they praise is, in the final analysis, just a fictionalized perfect country in line with Chinese ideals based on traditional Chinese philosophy and values.

Are Chinese characters really as simple as Guo Kang said?of course not.It is quite difficult to use this tool well.But his goal is not to prove that Chinese characters are simple, but to inform the other party that he is promoting the policy of Chinese characters and that he is confident enough to succeed.In this way, on the one hand, we can show that we are close to the civilization of the Central Plains, and on the other hand, we can use the experience of the Central Plains to demonstrate that Rome will become more and more stable.

Anyway, now Europeans are also in the era of touting China, and the craze brought by Marco Polo has not disappeared yet.According to experience, this enthusiasm can even last until the 19th century. In this case, it is useless to not use it.

He even prepared the basis for proving to other European countries that the introduction of Chinese is reasonable.This is also not something he came up with alone, but directly copied the thinking of the British back then.

Before the 19th century, English was in an embarrassing situation.There is an example that everyone should be familiar with: when Macartney visited the Qing Dynasty, he left without reaching any effective results with Qianlong.And this diplomatic failure, the biggest problem is not that the Qing Dynasty is too arrogant, or the British are too stubborn, but the simplest one - they don't understand.

The reason for not being able to understand is not that the Qing Dynasty closed their eyes and listened, and did not understand the language of Europeans.In fact, even after falling out with the Roman Church, there were still a large number of foreign missionary activities in the imperial court, and there were also specialized translation agencies with relatively professional translations in French, Latin, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, and even Prussian.

— but there is no English.

During the Qianlong period, the Four Translation Institute was commissioned to compile Huayi Yiyu as the official standard foreign language dictionary.It includes Fraancia, Radino, Ergmaniya, Italia, and Bonadugariya.In addition, there is another "(Oral English) Card Li Guo Translation", but there are many errors in the content, and the title, format, and signature are also different from the other books. It is suspected that it was a temporary addition later, and it is not the same batch of official translations.

It doesn't really matter what the content is.When the ancient imperial court transliterated names, they were quite particular about the use of words to praise and criticize.Comparing the names "Yida Liya" and "(kouying) Kaguo", as well as the string of "elegant language" and this exception, you can know the attitude of people at that time.

Not only the people of the Qing Dynasty, but also the European missionaries who served the Qing court did not understand English.This is also impossible, because in those days, serious cultural people in continental Europe, who would learn this thing... There was a Frenchman who claimed that he could help, looking for an interpreter, but Macartney and others did not dare to believe him, which caused the matter to fall through.

In the entire mission, the head of the mission, Macartney, was an old nobleman who knew Latin and was able to communicate with Qianlong.But others are basically talking chicken and duck.Not only that, Catholic missionaries also formed groups in the Qing Dynasty, formed cliques, and deliberately excluded them.

BJ bishop Tang Shixuan, priest Soderchao and others appointed by the Roman Church, made trouble for the British whenever they had the opportunity.According to the Dutch envoy Van Blanc, when inspecting the astronomical instruments brought by the British, Tang Shixuan and others found that many components were worn out, and the inscriptions on some parts were still in German.Obviously, this "national gift" is a pieced together second-hand thing, so the Qing government was quite angry, and it became the main evidence for their final characterization of the mission.

The situation of this language at that time can also be seen.

Probably because I have no confidence in my own language, English scholars are more radical than the French. In 1668, the Royal Society held a special seminar, chaired by Wilkins, one of the founders, to discuss whether Chinese characters could be directly used as the language of science and philosophy in Europe, or at least, designed to be like Chinese characters, but more Simple "ideographic symbols" are used to transform the existing English, so that it has Chinese-style "ideographic connotations".

——As explained by Guo Kang before, the introduction of Chinese characters as vocabulary codes into Greek is the idea directly adopted.The Royal Society has done a lot of in-depth research on this, and it has really demonstrated and tried, which is much more serious than those who later demanded the Latinization of Chinese characters, and even carried out Latinization research with foreign sponsorship.Therefore, their results can also be directly used for reference.

Similarly, he can come up with enough theories to call on other Europeans to follow suit, because this was originally a research craze for Europeans in the 17th century.Newton and others are engaged in the research of "universal language", because they think that Latin is not enough, so a more precise and concise language is needed, preferably with higher universality and abstraction, in order to facilitate natural philosophy Research.

Newton, who was very obsessed with religion, called this ideal "the language of the prophets" and devoted a lot of energy to it.Obviously, Europeans use this kind of rhetoric.

(End of this chapter)