Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 657

1850.

Defense of an Essay, &c.

615

polytheists as the name of their gods. By the phrase a spirit," as 1 have said above, we understand a created, immaterial intelligent be- ing. The human soul is such a spirit; but the shin of Chinese cosmo- gony is no such being as this: it exists before things, and it is an in- herent part of the eternally-existing primordial substance, of which heaven and earth, men and all things, are made, and which therefore all things share by their very constitution. To show therefore that the Chinese call the human mind shin, as well as hwan, by no means proves this word means merely spirit, and never god or divinity. How the Chinese came to give the names kwei and shin to these innate vital energies of the primordial substance, we have no account; but we may suppose that they regarded the words hwan soul, and peh anima, as not sufficiently dignified to serve as the names of this universal soul and anima, and so they borrowed the names of the objects of worship of their polytheistic countrymen, and called them kwei and shin.

This opinion is confirmed by the fact that pantheists have always strongly objected to being classed with atheists, and that to prevent this, they have everywhere used the appellative name of the objects of worship of their theistic countrymen, as the name of the spirit, soul, divinity, or whatever you may choose to call it, which pervades their 70 av. The Greek pantheists all did this: all the German and French idealistic pantheists of the present day do the same, and Spinoza calls his universal substance God. It is only on this principle, I think, that we can account for the assertion quoted above, that the kwei and shin of the human body are the very same as the kwei and shin who are worshiped; and that these again are the same as the kwei and shin who preside over the mechanism of nature; i. e. the kwci and shin of the pantheistic cosmogonists.

If we compare the views of Deity held by these Chinese cosmogo nists with the views of the Greek philosophers, we shall find them very similar to those of the predecessors of Aunxagoras, who believed that the world was Luxov, en-souled, or animated with a living soul; and who all “confounded the Infinite Mind or Deity with matter, making them one universe.”

I will not pursue this subject any farther, but will only say, I am fully persuaded, that all the instances that have been quoted, in which the word shin is used for the human mind, or in a sense analogous to

* I am strongly under the impression that I saw this very reason assigned for calling the universal hwan and peh, shin and kwei, in Chú Hi's Ya Lui or his Hook-hran; but I made no note of it at the time, and can nut now lay my hand on the passage.