and dullness and accent is coupled with extraordinary perception regards the nice distinctions of sounds of European consonants, vowels and diphthongs. You know better than I do how to take advantage of Chinese abilities with regard to the former, but I plead with you for more patience with your boys in the matter of their national disabilities regards the latter point. Beware of (5) Again, Chinese boys who are all singularly deficient in the matter of emotion and applying a European standard to the treatment of Chinese and develop their sense of feeling, have good form generally of aesthetic feeling which you rarely find in European children. There is inborn in Chinese boys a refined sensibility to the impressions of colour in their dress, and their delicate perception of what is pretty and graceful in ceremonies and etiquette.
It is for you to take advantage of this aesthetic feeling which in the case of the whole Chinese nation forms the essential basis of both religion and morality. They have no religious feeling, and general sentiment such as European children possess as their Christian birthright. Their religion is all reverence, their morality is all etiquette, and both religion and morality spring with them, not from an inborn sense of right and wrong, but from an aesthetic feeling of propriety and good form. I leave it to you to draw the inferences implied.
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