Page:The Spirit of the Chinese People.djvu/50

6 or almost wholly, a life of the heart. The whole life of Chinaman is a life of feeling—not feeling in the sense of sensation which comes from the bodily organs, nor feeling in the sense of passions which flow, as you would say, from the nervous system, but feeling in the sense of emotion or human affection which comes from the deepest part of our nature—the heart or soul. Indeed I may say here that the real Chinaman lives so much a life of emotion or human affection, a life of the soul, that he may be said sometimes to neglect more than he ought to do, even the necessary requirements of the life of the senses of a man living in this world composed of body and soul. That is the true explanation of the insensibility of the Chinese to the physical discomforts of unclean surroundings and want of refinement. But that is neither here nor there.

The Chinese people, I say, have the power of sympathy because they live wholly a life of the heart—a life of emotion or human affection. Let me here, first of all, give you two illustrations of what I mean by living a life of the heart. My first illustration is this. Some of you may have personally known an old friend and colleague of mine in Wuchang—known him when he was Minister of the Foreign Office here in Peking—Mr. Liang Tun-yen, Mr. Liang told me, when he first received the appointment of the Customs Taotai of Hankow, that what made him wish and strive to become a great mandarin, to wear the red button, and what gave him pleasure then in receiving this appointment, was not because he cared for the red button, not because he