passing, to observe
what mental powers are possessed by those races and individuals who
subsist entirely upon the products of the vegetable kingdom.

When we come to consider the mentality of the Oriental races we
certainly have to acknowledge that Oriental culture--ethical,
metaphysical, and poetical--has given birth to some of the grandest and
noblest thoughts that mankind possesses, and has devised philosophical
systems that have been the comfort and salvation of countless millions
of souls. Anyone who doubts the intellectual and ethical attainments of
that remarkable nation of which we in the West know so little--the
Chinese--should read the panegyric written by Sir Robert Hart, who, for
forty years, lived among them, and learnt to love and venerate them as
worthy of the highest admiration and respect. Others have written in
praise of the people of Burma. Speaking of the Burman, a traveller
writes: 'He will exercise a graceful charity unheard of in the West--he
has discovered how to make life happy without selfishness and to combine
an adequate power for hard work with a corresponding ability to enjoy
himself gracefully ... he is a philosopher and an artist.'

Speaking of the Indian peasant a writer in an English journal says: 'The
ryot lives in the face of Nature, on a simple diet easily procured, and
inherits a philosophy, which, without literary culture, lifts his spirit
into a higher plane of thought than other peasantries know of.
Abstinence from flesh food of any kind, not only gives him pure blood
exempt from civilized diseases but makes him the friend and not the
enemy, of the animal world around.'

Eastern literature is renowned for its subtle metaphysics. The higher
types of Orientals are endowed with an extremely subtle intelligence, so
subtle as to be wholly unintelligible to the ordinary Westerner. It is
said that Pythagoras and Plato travelled in the East and were initiated
into Eastern mysticism. The East possesses many scriptures, and the
greater part of the writings of Eastern scholars consist of commentaries
on the sacred writings. Among the best known monumental philosophical
and literary achievements maybe mentioned the _Tao Teh C'hing_; the
_Zend Avesta;_ the _Three Vedas_; the _Brahmanas_; the _Upanishads;_ and
the _Bhagavad-gita_, that most beautiful 'Song Celestial' which for
nearly two thousand years has moulded the thoughts and inspired the
aspirations of the teeming millions of India.