Note 635 — Chapter VI · LUNAR CALENDARS AND THE WEEK

“Some persons,” writes an experienced observer of the Chinese, “have expressed their surprise that the unceasing round of toil which the Chinese labourer pursues has not rendered him more degraded. It is usually said that a weekly rest is necessary for the continuance of the powers of body and mind in man in their full activity, and that decrepitude and insanity would oftener result were it not for this relaxation.... Yet, in China, people who apparently tax themselves uninterruptedly to the utmost stretch of body and mind, live in health to old age.... Nothing like a seventh day of rest, or religious respect to that interval of time, is known among the Chinese, but they do not, as a people, exercise their minds to the intensity, or upon the high subjects, common among western nations, and this perhaps is one reason why their yearly toil produces no disastrous effects” (S. W. Williams, The Middle Kingdom,² New York, 1883, i, 809 sq.).