Matthew Arnold calls the poetry of the best Greek poets the priestess of imaginative reason. Now the spirit of the ese people, as it is seen in the best spes of the products of their art and literature, is really what Matthew Arnold calls imaginative reason. Matthew Arnold says:_"The poetry of later Paganism lived by the senses and uanding: the poetry of medieval Christianity lived by the heart and imagination. But the mai of the modern spirits life, of the modern European spirit to-day, is her the senses and uanding, nor the heart and imagination, it is the imaginative reason."
Now if it is true what Matthew 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 see how valuable for the people of Europe this Spirit of the ese peo-pie 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 uand it, love it, instead of ign, despising and trying to destroy it.
But now before I finally clude, I want to give you a warning. I want to warn you that when you think of this Spirit of the ese People, which I have tried to explain to you, you should bear in mind that it is not a sce, philosophy, theosophy, or any "ism, " like the theosophy or " ism" of Madame Blavatsky or Mrs. Besant. The Spirit of the ese People is not even what you would call a mentality_ an active w of the brain and mind. The Spirit of the ese People, I want to tell you, is a state of mind, a temper of the soul, which you ot 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 ese of the English poets, Wordsworth, which better than anything I have said or say, will describe to you the serene and blessed mood which is the Spirit of the ese People. These few lines of the English poet will put before you in a way I ot hope to do, that happy union of soul with intelle the ese type of humanity, that serene and blessed mood which gives to the real aman his inexpressible gentleness. Wordsworth in his lines on Tintern Abbey says:_
"... nor less, I trust To them I may have owed anift Of aspect more sublime: that blessed mood In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world, Is lightehat serene and blessed mood In which the affes gently lead us on, _
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame And even motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and bee a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things. "
The serene and blessed mood whiables us to see into the life of things: that is imaginative reason, that is the Spirit of the ese People.
THE ESE WOMAN
Matthew Arnold, speaking of the argument taken from the Bible which was used in the House of ons to support the Bill for enabling a man to marry his deceased wifes sister, said: "Who will believe when he really siders the matter, that when the femiure, the feminine ideal and our relations with them are brought into question, the delicate and apprehensive genius of the Indo-European race, the race whivehe Muses, and Chivalry, and the Madonna, is to find its last word