are rain, sunshine, heat, cold, wind, and seasonableness. When the five come, all complete, and each in its proper order, even the various plants will be richly luxuriant. Should any one of them be either excessively abundant or excessively deficient, there will be evil. "There are the favorable verifications:12 namely, of gravity, which is emblemed by seasonable rain; of orderliness, emblemed by seasonable sunshine; of wisdom, emblemed by seasonable heat; of deliberation, emblemed by seasonable cold; and of sageness, emblemed by seasonable wind. There are also the unfavorable verifications: namely, of recklessness, emblemed by constant rain; of assumption, emblemed by constant sunshine; of indolence, emblemed by constant heat, of hastiness, emblemed by constant cold; and of stupidity, emblemed by constant wind." He went on to say, "The king should examine the character of the whole year; the high ministers and officers that sons; what is here said supposes · -I know not what physical speculation of those times. It is needless to bring to bear on the text the interpretation of the later Chinese, for they are full of false ideas on the subject of physics. It may be also that the count of Chi wanted to play the physicist on points which he did not know." There seems to underlie the words of the count that feeling of the harmony between the natural and spiritual worlds, which occurs at times to most men, and strongly affects minds under deep religious thought or on the wings of poetic rapture, but the way in which he endeavors to give the subject a practical application can only be characterized as grotesque. 12 Compare with this what is said above on the second division of the Plan, "the five personal matters." It is observed here by Tshai Chan, the disciple of Chu Hsi, and whose commentary on the Shu has, of all others, the greatest authority: "To say that on occasion of such and such a personal matter being realized, there will be the favorable verification corresponding to it, or that, on occasion of the failure of such realization, there will be the corresponding unfavorable verification, would betray a pertinacious obtuseness, and show that the speaker was not a man to be talked with on the mysterious operations of nature. It is not easy to describe the reciprocal meeting of Heaven and men. The hidden springs touched by failure and success, and the minute influences that respond to them: who can know these but the man that has apprehended all truth?" This is in effect admitting that the statements in the text can be of no practical use. And the same thing is admitted by the latest imperial editors of the Shu on the use which the text goes on to make of the thoughtful use of the verifications by the king and others. VOL. XI.-7. |