WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
of chivalry. The rest of the world, China only excepted, are, and have ever been, utter strangers to its delights and advantages."
Recognising that a Chinese lover is compelled to accept the bride discovered for him by his father, it is rather difficult to credit the assertion that I have italicised in the foregoing passage. Love, like morality, is determined by climate and racial temperament. The Chinese ideal of conjugality would repel a Western woman, and our standard would have the same effect upon a woman of China.
A young English beau, conversing with Goldsmith's philosophic Chinaman, says that "the Asiatic beauties are the most convenient women alive, for they have no souls; positively there is nothing in nature I should like so much as ladies without souls; soul here is the utter ruin of half the sex."
Such flippant pronouncements often contain some elements of sound truth. English women have tended to exalt unduly the "spiritual" quality of their love, and have too often essayed to refine away the substance. A Chinese woman would not appreciate the ethereal, sentimental attitude towards the passion of the sexes. Yet she would understand the art of retaining her husband's affection and rendering wedded life peaceful.
The Chinese sage corrects the young Englishman.
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