the people of Europe this Spirit of the Chiuese people is,—this spirit which Matthew Arnold calls imaginative reason. How valuable it is, I say, and how important it is that you should study it, try to understand it, love it, instead of ignoring, despising and trying to destroy it.
But now before I finally conclude, I want to give you a warning. I want to warn you that when you think of this Spirit of the Chinese People, which I have tried to explain to you, you should bear in mind that it is not a science, philosophy, theosophy, or any "ism, " like the theosophy or " ism" of Madame Blavatsky or Mrs. Besant. The Spirit of the Chinese People is not even what you would call a mentality—an active working of the brain and mind. The Spirit of the Chinese People, I want to tell you, is a state of mind, a temper of the soul, which you cannot learn as you learn shorthand or Esperanto—in short, a mood, or in the words of the poet, a serene and blessed mood.
Now last of all I want to ask your permission to recite to you a few lines of poetry from the most Chinese of the English poets, Wordsworth, which better than anything I have said or can say, will describe to you the serene and blessed mood which is the Spirit of the Chinese People. These few lines of the English poet will put before you in a way I cannot hope to do, that happy union of soul with intellect in the Chinese type of humanity, that serene and blessed mood which gives to the real Chinaman his inexpressible gentleness. Wordsworth in his lines on Tintern Abbey says:—
