Page:The Spirit of the Chinese People.djvu/141

Indeed this quality of perfect meekness in the Chinese feminine ideal you will find in the feminine ideal of no other people, —of no other civilization, Hebrew, Greek or Roman. This perfect, divine meekness in the Chinese feminine ideal you will find only in one civilization,—the Christian civilization, when that civilization in Europe reached its perfection, during the period of the Renaissance. If you will read the beautiful story of Griselda in Boccacio's Decameron and see the true Christian feminine ideal shown there, you will then understand what this perfect submissiveness, this divine meekness, meekness to the point of absolute selflessness,—in the Chinese feminine ideal means. In short, in this quality of divine meekness, the true Christian feminine ideal is the Chinese feminine ideal, with just a shade of difference. If you will carefully compare the picture of the Christian Madonna with,—not the Budhist Kuan Yin,—but with the pictures of women fairies and genii painted by famous Chinese artists, you will be able to see this difference,—the difference between the Christian feminine ideal, and the Chinese feminine ideal. The Christian Madonna is meek and so is the Chinese feminine ideal. The Christian Madonna is etherial and so is the Chinese feminine ideal. But the Chinese feminine ideal is more than all that; the Chinese feminine ideal is debonair. To have a conception of what this charm and grace expressed by the word debonair mean, you will have to go to ancient Greece,—