Excerpt from The Middle Kingdom, Vol. 2 of 2: A Survey of the Geography, Government, Education, Social Life, Arts, Religion, &C. Of the Chinese Empire and Its Inhabitants
IT is a sensible remark of De Guignes p. That the habit we fall into of conceiving things according to the words which express them, often leads us into error when read ing the relations of travellers. Such writers have seen objects altogether new, but they are compelled, when describing them, to employ equivalent terms in their own language in order to be understood while these same terms tend to deceive the reader, who imagines that he sees such palaces, colonnades, peristyles, &c., under these designations as he has been used to, when, in fact, they are quite another thing. The same observation is true of other things than architecture, and of other nations than the Chinese, and this confusion of terms and meanings proves a fruitful source of error in regard to an accurate knowledge of foreign nations, and a just perception of their condition. For instance, the terms a court of justice, a common school, politeness, learning, navy, houses, Geo. As well as the names of things, like razor, shoe, cap, bed, pencil, paper, &c., are inapplicable to the same things in England and China; while it is plainly impossible to coin a new word in English to describe the Chinese article.
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