Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 402

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Defense of an Essay &

Junr,

If M. Visdelou here gives us a correct account of what is said in the most ancient of the Confucian classics of the “first cause,” how hopeless is the attempt to make out Dr Legge's point, that the Shangti of the classics is “God over all, blessed for ever." So far from regarding him, as a necessary, self-existent, independent being, the learned men of K'ánght's reign fancied, from what they read of him in the Yih King that the spirits of Shangti had been dispersed because of their neglect to offer sacrifices to him during the troubles of the empire, and that they must be re-collected by sacrifices.!!!

We beg Dr. Legge also to observe that M. Visdelou distinctly says, that Confucius never affirms in this book or in any other, that “ Sháng- ti, i. e, the supreme Emperor, ever generated the Heavens and the earth," and either, reconcile this with his position that Shángtí is God (propriè) or, show that M. Visdelou is mistaken.

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Of the famous diagrams which are used in divination he gives the following account :—“ It is time to pass on to the production of the dia- grams. The (primary) matter divided itself into two, the two divided into four, the four into eight, the eight into sixteen, the sixteen into thirty-two, the thirty-two into sixty-four; here it stopped, for there are only sixty-four diagrams. This is in fact, a geometrical progression, which may be continued ad infinitum. But what is there solid in all this? what is this generation of elements? And what are the five clements which generate and compose all things? Notwithstanding two of them, wood and metal, certainly neither of them ever enter into the composition of all things, still they believe that they do enter, and that so thoroughly, that they even impress some of their qualities upon the human soul. For, this is a dogma, received from all the Inter- preters, and even from the Ancients, that the five virtues, viz. be- nevolence, rectitude, propriety, wisdom and fidelity, spring from the five elements; e. g. benevolence from wood; rectitude from metal; and so of the others. How much is there in all this, which only serves to estrange the mind from the knowledge of the true God, and of the first cause! The eight diagrams of Fuh-hi merely present to the mind eight things; viz, heaven, earth, fire, water of two kinds, mountains, and other things of like nature; but there is not one word about God, or the first principle of all things.'

Of the immediate principle of all things he says;-"The Chinese philosophers lay it down as an incontestable fact that the five elements, viz, wood, fire, earth, metal and water, are the immediate principles of all things, and that the five genii (shin), who govern them, extend their dominion over the dynasties, which ought in turn to possess the