This is a perplexing problem. If we do not generalize to the larger milieu in which a particular text is placed it is difficult to appreciate either what it says or the significance it has in the culture that grew it. But if the best we can do—like a number of late 19th century German scholars—is characterize China as a land of ewigen Stillstand we are surely better off with no generalizations whatsoever; making vague or erroneous generalizations tend to stereotypes, and there are already a superfluity of these for China, from Charlie Chan to Fu Manchu.