tranquillity to its men and women. They meet me with their baskets full of dark-colored and yellow silks, thereby showing the virtues of us, the kings of Chau. Heaven's favors stir them up, so that they come with their allegiance to our great State of Chau. And now, ye spirits, grant me your aid, that I may relieve the millions of the people, and nothing turn out to your shame." "

3. On the day Wu-wu, the army crossed the ford of Mang, and on Kwei-hai it was drawn up in array in the borders of Shang, waiting for the gracious decision of Heaven. On Chia-tze, at early dawn, Shau led forward his troops, looking like a forest, and assembled them in the wild of Mu. But they offered no opposition to our army. Those in the front inverted their spears, and attacked those behind them, till they fled; and the blood flowed till it floated the pestles of the mortars. Thus did King Wu once don his armor, and the kingdom was grandly settled. He overturned the existing rule of Shang, and made government resume its old course. He delivered the count of Chi from prison, and raised a mound over the grave of Pi-kan. He bowed forward to the cross-bar of his carriage at the gate of Shang Yung's village. He dispersed the treasures of the Stag Tower, and distributed the grain of Chu-chiao 10 thus conferring great gifts on all within the four seas, so that the people joyfully submitted to him.

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He arranged the nobles in five orders,11 assigning the territories to them according to a threefold scale. 12 He gave offices only to the worthy, and employments only to the able.

8 Shang Yung must have been some worthy in disgrace with Shau, and living in the retirement of his village.

The Stag Tower was the name of a place in the present department of Wei-hui, Ho-nan, where Shau had accumulated great treasures. He fled to it after his defeat, and burned himself to death; but it would appear he had not succeeded in consuming at the same time all his wealth.

10 Chu-chiao was in the present district of Chu-chau, department Kwang-phing, Chih-li, where Shau had collected great stores of grain. 11 Dukes, marquises, earls, counts, and barons.

12 Dukes and marquises had the same amount of territory assigned to them, and counts and barons also.

He attached great importance to the people's being taught the duties of the five relations of society, and to measures for ensuring a sufficient supply of food, attention to the rites of mourning, and to sacrifices. He showed the reality of his truthfulness, and proved clearly his righteousness. He honored virtue, and rewarded merit. Then he had only to let his robes fall down, and fold his hands, and the kingdom was orderly ruled.

Book IV.- THE GREAT PLAN 1

1. In the thirteenth year,2 the king went to inquire of the count of Chi, and said to him, "Oh! count of Chi, Heaven,

1 The Great Plan is the most celebrated of the Books of the Shu. It is

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ordinarily classed among the "Counsels or among the "Instructions," but might as well have a place among the “Canons.” It is a remarkable production, and though it appears among the documents of the Chau Dynasty, there is claimed for the substance of it a much greater antiquity. According to the introductory sentences, King Wu, the founder of Chau, obtained it from the count of Chi in the same year, the thirteenth of his dignity as Chief of the West, that he took the field against the tyrant of Shang. The count of Chi, it is understood, was the Grand-Master at the court of Shang, who appears in the concluding Book of the last part. He says there, that, when ruin overtook the House of Shang, he would not be the servant of another dynasty. Accordingly, he refused to acknowledge the sovereignty of King Wu, who had delivered him from the prison in which he had been confined by Chau-hsin, and fled or purposed perhaps to flee to Korea. Wu respected and admired his fidelity to the fallen dynasty, and invested him with that territory. He then, it is said, felt constrained to appear at the court of Chau, when the king consulted him on the principles of government; and the result was that he communicated to him this Great Plan, with its nine divisions. When we read the Book, we see that it belonged originally to the time of Hsia, and that the larger portion of it should be ascribed to the Great Yu, and was as old, indeed, as the reign of Yao. How it had come into the possession of the count of Chi we can not tell. Nor does it appear how far the language of it should be ascribed to him. That the larger portion of it had come down from the times of Hsia is not improbable. The use of the number nine and other numbers, and the naming of the various divisions of the Plan, are in harmony with Yu's style and practise in his Counsels in the second part of our Classic, and in the second part also of the Tribute of Yu. We are told in the introductory sentences, that Heaven or God gave the Plan with its divisions to Yu. To explain the way in which the gift was made, there is a tradition about a myste2 See the commencement of Book i.

working unseen, secures the tranquillity of the lower people, aiding them to be in harmony with their condition.3 I do not know how the unvarying principles of its method in doing so should be set forth in due order."

The count of Chi thereupon replied, "I have heard that in old time Khwan dammed up the inundating waters, and thereby threw into disorder the arrangement of the five elements. God was consequently roused to anger, and did not give him the Great Plan with its nine divisions, and thus the unvarying principles of Heaven's method were allowed to go to ruin. Khwan was therefore kept a prisoner till his death, and his son Yu rose up and entered on the same undertaking. To him Heaven gave the Great Plan with its nine divisions, and the unvarying principles of its method were set forth in their due order.

2. "Of those divisions the first is called the five ele

rious tortoise that appeared in the waters of the Lo, bearing well-defined marks on its back from one to nine, and that thereupon Yu determined the meaning of those marks and of their numbers, and completed the nine divisions of the Plan. Of this legend, however, it is not necessary to speak in connection with the Shu, which does not mention it; it will come up in connection with the Yi King.

The Great Plan means the great model for the government of the nation the method by which the people may be rendered happy and tranquil, in harmony with their condition, through the perfect character of the king, and his perfect administration of government.

Gaubil says that the Book is a treatise at once of physics, astrology, divination, morals, politics, and religion, and that it has a sufficiently close resemblance to the work of Ocellus the Lucanian. There is a shadowy resemblance between the Great Plan and the curious specimen of Pythagorean doctrine which we have in the treatise on the Universe; but the dissimilarities are still greater and more numerous. More especially are the differences between the Greek mind, speculative, and the Chinese mind, practical, apparent in the two works. Where the Chinese writer loses himself in the sheerest follies of his imagining, he yet gropes about for a rule to be of use in the conduct of human affairs.

3 Khung Ying-ta of the Thang Dynasty, says on this: "The people have been produced by supreme Heaven, and both body and soul are Heaven's gift. Men have thus the material body and the knowing mind, and Heaven further assists them, helping them to harmonize their lives. The right and the wrong of their language, the correctness and errors of their conduct, their enjoyment of clothing and food, the rightness of their various movements — all these things are to be harmonized by what they are endowed with by Heaven."

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ments'; the second, reverent attention to the five personal matters'; the third, earnest devotion to the eight objects of government'; the fourth, the harmonious use of the five dividers of time'; the fifth, the establishment and use of royal perfection'; the sixth, the discriminating use of the three virtues'; the seventh, the intelligent use of the means for the examination of doubts'; the eighth, the thoughtful use of the various verifications'; the ninth,' the hortatory use of the five sources of happiness, and the awing use of the six occasions of suffering.

3. i. "First, of the five elements. The first is water; the second is fire; the third, wood; the fourth, metal; and the fifth, earth. The nature of water is to soak and descend; of fire, to blaze and ascend; of wood, to be crooked and straight; of metal, to yield and change; while that of earth is seen in seed-sowing and in-gathering. That which soaks and descends becomes salt; that which blazes and ascends becomes bitter; that which is crooked and straight becomes sour; that which yields and changes becomes acrid; and from seed-sowing and in-gathering comes sweetness."

4 English sinologists have got into the habit of rendering this Chinese symbol by "elements," but it hardly seems possible to determine what the Chinese mean by it. We intend by "elements" "the first principles or ingredients of which all things are composed." The Pythagoreans, by their four elements of earth, water, air, and fire, did not intend so much the nature or essence of material substances, as the forms under which matter is actually presented to us. The character hsing, meaning "to move," "to be in action," shows that the original conception of the Chinese is of a different nature; and it is said in the Khang-hsi Dictionary, "The five hsing move and revolve between heaven and earth, without ever ceasing, and hence they are named." The editors of the latest imperial edition of the Shu say, "Distributed through the four seasons, they make the five dividers of time'; exhibited in prognostications, they give rise to divination by the tortoise-shell and the reeds; having lodgment in the human body, they produce the five personal matters'; moved by good fortune and bad, they produce the various verifications'; communicated to organisms, they produce the different natures, hard and soft, good and evil; working out their results in the changes of those organisms, they necessitate - here benevolence and there meanness, here longevity and there early death all these things are from the operation of the five hsing. But if we speak of them in their simplest and most important character, they are what man's life depends on, what the people can not do without." After all this, I should still be sorry to be required to say what the five hsing are.

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ii. "Secondly, of the five personal matters. The first is the bodily demeanor; the second, speech; the third, seeing; the fourth, hearing; the fifth, thinking. The virtue of the bodily appearance is respectfulness; of speech, accordance with reason; of seeing, clearness; of hearing, distinctness; of thinking, perspicaciousness. The respectfulness becomes manifest in gravity; accordance with reason in orderliness; the clearness, in wisdom; the distinctness, in deliberation; and the perspicaciousness, in sageness."

iii. "Thirdly, of the eight objects of government. — The first is food; the second, wealth and articles of convenience; the third, sacrifices; the fourth, the business of the Minister of Works; the fifth, that of the Minister of Instruction; the sixth, that of the Minister of Crime; the seventh, the observances to be paid to guests; the eighth, the army."

iv. "Fourthly, of the five dividers of time." The first is the year or the planet Jupiter; the second, the moon; the third, the sun; the fourth, the stars and planets and the zodiacal spaces; and the fifth, the calendaric calculations."

v. "Fifthly, of royal perfection.8 - The sovereign, hạving established in himself the highest degree and pattern of excellence, concentrates in his own person the five sources of happiness, and proceeds to diffuse them, and give them to the multitudes of the people. Then they, on their part, embodying your perfection, will give it back to you, and secure the preservation of it. Among all the multitudes of the people 5 These five "matters 99 are represented as being in the human person what the five hsing are in nature. Demeanor is the human correspondence of water, speech that of fire, etc.

6 Medhurst calls the eight objects of government "the eight regulators," and Gaubil calls them "les huit règles du gouvernement." The phrase means the eight things to be attended to in government — its objects and departments.

7" The five dividers of time" are, with Medhurst, "the five arrangers," and with Gaubil, "les cinq périodes." This division of the Great Plan is substantially the same as Yao's instructions to his astronomers.

8 By "royal perfection" we are to understand the sovereign when he is, or has made himself, all that he ought to be. "Perfection" is "the utmost point," the extreme of excellence, realized in the person of the sovereign, guiding his administrative measures, and serving as an example and attractive influence to all below, both ministers and people.