Page:The Spirit of the Chinese People.djvu/117

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lives the life of a man of adult reason with the simple heart of a child, and the Spirit of the Chinese people is a happy union of soul with intellect. Now if you will examine the products of the Chinese mind in their standard works of art and literature, you will find that it is this happy union of soul with the intellect which makes them so satisfying and delightful. What Matthew Arnold says of the poetry of Homer is true of all Chinese standard literature, that "it has not only the power of profoundly touching that natural heart of humanity, which it is the weakness of Voltaire that he cannot reach, but can also address the understanding with all Voltaire's admirable simplicity and rationality."

Matthew Arnold calls the poetry of the best Greek poets the priestess of imaginative reason. Now the spirit of the Chinese people, as it is seen in the best specimens of the products of their art and literature, is really what Mathow Arnold calls imaginative reason. Matthew Arnold says:—"The poetry of later Paganism lived by the senses and understanding: the poetry of mediæval Christianity lived by the heart and imagination. But the main element of the modern spirit's life, of the modern European spirit to-day, is neither the senses and understanding, nor the heart and imagination, it is the imaginative reason."

Now if it is true what Mathew Arnold says here that the element by which the modern spirit of the people of Europe to-day, if it would live right—has to live, is imaginative reason, then you can see how valuable for