Page:The Spirit of the Chinese People.djvu/140

94 But, I will now speak of the difference which, I said, there is between the Chinese feminine ideal and the feminine ideal of the old Hebrew people. The Hebrew lover in the Songs of Solomon, thus addresses his lady-love: "Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners!" People who have seen beautiful dark-eyed Jewesses even to day, will acknowledge the truth and graphicness of the picture which the old Hebrew lover here gives of the feminine ideal of his race. But in and about the Chinese feminine ideal, I want to say here, there is nothing terrible either in a physical or in a moral sense. Even the Helen of Chinese history, —the beauty, who with one glance brings down a city and with another glance destroys a kingdom (—顧傾人城在顧傾人國) she is terrible only mataphoricallymetaphorically [sic]. In an essay on "the Spirit of the Chinese people," I said that the one word which will sum up the total impression which the Chinese type of humanity makes upon you is the English word, "gentle." If this is true of the real Chinaman, it is truer of the real Chinese woman. In fact this "gentleness" of the real Chinaman, in the Chinese woman, becomes sweet meekness. The meekness, the submissiveness of the woman in China is like that of Milton's Eve in the "Paradise Lost," who says to her husband,