Page:The Spirit of the Chinese People.djvu/58

 you should remember that this nation of children, who live a life of the heart, who are so primitive in many of their ways, have yet a power of mind and rationality which you do not find in a primitive people, a power of mind and rationality which has enabled them to deal with the complex and difficult problems of social life, government and civilisation with a success which, I will venture to say here, the ancient and modern nations of Europe have not been able to attain—a success so signal that they have been able practically and actually to keep in peace and order a greater portion of the population of the Continent of Asia under a great Empire.

In fact, what I want to say here, is that the wonderful peculiarity of the Chinese people is not that they live a life of the heart. All primitive people also live a life of the heart. The Christian people of medieval Europe, as we know, also lived a life of the heart. Matthew Arnold says:—"The poetry of medieval Christianity lived by the heart and imagination." But the wonderful peculiarity of the Chinese people, I want to say here, is that, while living a life of the heart, the life of a child, they yet have a power of mind and rationality which you do not find in the Christian people of medieval Europe or in any other primitive people. In other words, the wonderful peculiarity of the Chinese is that for a people, who have lived so long as a grown-up nation, as a nation of adult reason, they are yet able to this day to live the life of a child - life of the heart.