Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 483

1850.

Tract upon Nourishing the Spirit.

445

ART. II.

Letter to the Editor of the Repository, accompanied with

a translation of a Chinese tract upon Nourishing the Spirit By W. H. MEDHURST, D. D.

To the Editor of the Chinese Repository,

Dear Sir, I have the pleasure herewith to forward you the translation of a paper, extracted from the writings of a learned man recently deceased in Kiáng- sí. This paper forms one of many hundreds which he has left behind him. His posthumous works, amounting to about forty volumes, have been published by his disciples, and are distributed gratuitously. The writer was a genuine modern Chinese philosopher, having derived his ideas solely from native sources, of which his productions are sufficient evidence. The essay now sent exhibits some indications of mental activity, and l'have endeavored to give it an English dress, in order to show to your readers that mind is not entirely asleep in China. My principal object, however, is to adduce it as an instance of the way in which the word shin is employed by the learned of this country. Lest any should think I have taken an unfair advantage of my author, I here- with inclose a copy of the original paper. You will perceive that the word in question occurs very frequently, and there can be no doubt that the writer uses it in the sense of spirit, including both the human spirit and the invisible beings who are sacrificed to by the Chinese. I may safely challenge the warmest advocate of skin in the sense of God to make sense of this paper by thus trans- lating it throughout. One who is firmly opposed to me in this controversy, has made use of something like the following observation: "There are writings in Chinese, in which shin is so employed up and down, that a man must be a fool to suppose that it means anything else than spirit." The paper now sent you is in my estimation of that character. Let those who maintain that shin ineans God, and who insist on telling the Chinese that there is only one Shin, look to their position, for it is philologically untenable. Let them come for- ward, and answer the arguiment derived from the writings of this Chinese, who as it regards the use of terms is one of millions, and whose usus loquendi is es- tablished by the practice of thousands of years: if they can not, let them not attempt to force the language of a mighty people, nor presume to instruct a whole nation as to the meaning of their own terins, with which natives are much better acquainted than foreigners can possibly be.

But to come to our author; it is evident, from the very title of his piece, that he uses shin primarily in the sense of the human spirit. In all that is said about the Rationalist doctors nourishing their spiritual energies, and the proud literati allowing their minds to wander after the external objects, there can be no doubt that the writer means by shin the spirit of the mind. When he comes to speak of the prayers that are offered by some to

神明 spiritual intelli-

gences, it is evident that the meaning he attaches to the term shin is still spirit,

only in the concrete instead of the abstract sense: and in order to prevent his being mistaken, he calls the one class spirits connected with the seen, and the other spirits belonging to the unseen world. These two classes, he says, “spirits with spirits," hold intercourse together, without being limited by external form.

On this phrase, Mr. Editor, 1 am content to rest my argument: 神與神

spirit with spirit. That these two words thus coupled together, mean sub- stantially the same thing, no man who is not resolved to maintain his hypo- thesis, "malgré all objections," can reasonably doubt, and there can be no mis- take about the application. The one refers, according to the writer's own ex- planation, to the spirit of the mind, and the other to the spiritual beings whom the Chinese are in the habit of worshiping, and yet both are shin,-uo:nis. takably shin-without any adjunct or qualification, shin. The inference from