The world continued to present itself to their minds as a collection of things.

Nor did their subsequent Chinese education change their view.

Buddhism simply infused all things with the one universal spirit.
As to inanimate objects, the idea of supposing sex where there is not even life is altogether too fanciful a notion for the Far Eastern mind.
Impersonality first fashioned the nouns, and then the nouns, by their very impersonality, helped keep impersonal the thought and fettered fancy.

All those temptings to poesy which to the Aryan imagination lie latent in the sex with which his forefathers humanized their words, never stir the Tartar nor the Chinese soul.

They feel the poetry of nature as much as, indeed much more than, we; but it is a poetry unassociated with man.