Page:Oriental Religions - China.djvu/35

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THE CHINESE MIND.

A study in Universal Religion

THE civilized nations of the West, subject for ages to mutual friction and physical intermixture, afford very inadequate data for studying the distinctive capacities of races. They do not help us to determine how far a separate ethnic growth can unfold the germs of universal principles in philosophy and faith. But in the Oriental world this opportunity is presented on a magnificent scale. The vast population of China, so uniform in physical type that they seem free from foreign admixture, isolated by the ocean and by the loftiest mountain barriers in the world, have shaped for themselves a peculiar civilization, whose inveteracy proves it a genuine outgrowth of the race and soil; while its startling contrasts with other Asiatic forms render such common aspirations as shall be found to underlie this difference all the more impressive signs of Universal Religion.[1]

General distinctions of Chinese from Hindus.

In that division of the present work which treats of the Hindus, I have indicated their main difference from the Chinese, by calling the mental quality of the one family cerebral, and that of the other, muscular. There, we have an imaginative, metaphysical race, who think away matter, and hate the

  1. ↑ For a better understanding of this term as used in the present volume, as well as of the scope and purpose of the whole work, of which the following pages form a second part, the reader is referred to the Introductory chapter of the preceding volume, on India.
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