370
Defense of an Essay, &c.
JULY;
"This is perhaps," says Mr. Gutzlaff, “the most rational theory of cosino- gony the sages of China have been able to furnish. The orthodox creed taken from the Yih King, teaches nothing but absurd materialism. Heaven operates, Earth produces, and all things come into existence, &c. Sz'tsz' tell us that all that has shape, heaven and earth included, was produced by something shapeless, and that the visible world was produced by successive revolutions. The Wu-yun Lih-nien ki is still more curious in its theory. 'When the pri- meval vapors and ether germinated, there was a commencement of things; heaven and earth were separated; the male and female principles came into existence; the Yang scattered the primeval ether, the Yin conceived, and man was produced by their union. The first born was Pwánkú. At the approach of death, his body was transformed: his breath was changed into winds and clouds; his voice into thunder; his left eye into the sun, and his right into the moon; his limbs became the four regions (poles); his blood and serum rivers; his sinews and arteries, the earth's surface; his flesh fields; his beard, the stars; his skin and hair, herbs and trees; his teeth and bones, metals aud rocks; his fine marrow, pearls and precious stones; his dropping sweat, rain; enl the insects which stuck to his body became people."
These several schemes will be found to vary considerably from each other in details; but they, and all the schemes of cosmogony I have ever seen from the pen of Chinese writers, agree in being entirely godless. No "conscious mind, itself self-existent," creating the primary matter, or even out of chaotic matter, producing order by the for- mation of the heavens and the earth. The following short expression of the doctrine of the Yih King is that in which probably all the literati would agree. It is from the 49th section of Chú-fútsz's entire works.
"All things, the four seasons and the five elements, come only from the Great Extreme (t'ái kih). The Great Extreme is the primordial substance (k'i) which, moving along, divided and made two k'i; that which in itself has motion is the Yang, and that which had rest, or is inertia, is the Yin. It (the k'i) divided and made the five elements. It also further divided and made all things."
萬物四時五行只是從那太極中來太極只 是一箇氣迤邐分做兩個氣裏面動底是陽 靜底是陰又分做五氣又散為萬物
This is the same scheme of making all things, as that referred to in the Li Ki, quoted by Dr Medhurst and commented on just above. If this be the doctrine of "the learned" on this subject, they must be ignorant of the true God, for if Shángtí stood quietly by and permitted The Yin and Yang to grind on until heaven and earth and all things were made, we can not regard him as God (propriè ) ; and if he did not exist at that time as an idle spectator, he is not self-existent from eter- nity and this is equally fatal to his claim to be regarded as truly and