Yang Hsiung.--Yang Hsiung was a philosopher who flourished
B.C. 53 - A.D. 18. He taught that the nature of man at birth is neither
good nor evil, but a mixture of both, and that development in either
direction depends wholly upon environment. To one who asked about God,
he replied, "What have I to do with God? Watch how without doing
anything He does all things." To another who said, "Surely it is God who
fashions and adorns all earthly forms," he replied, "Not so; if God in
an earthly sense were to fashion and adorn all things, His strength
would not be adequate to the task."
Wang Ch'ung.--Wang Ch'ung, A.D. 27-97, denies that men after death live
again as spiritual beings on earth. "Animals," he argues, "do not become
spirits after death; why should man alone undergo this change? . . .
That which informs man at birth is vitality, and at death this vitality
is extinguished. Vitality is produced by the pulsations of the blood;
when these cease, vitality is extinguished, the body decays, and becomes
dust. How can it become a spirit? . . . When a man dies, his soul
ascends to heaven, and his bones return (_kuei_) to earth; therefore he
is spoken of as a disembodied spirit (_kuei_), the latter word really
meaning that which has returned. . . . Vitality becomes humanity, just
as water becomes ice. The ice melts and is water again; man dies
and reverts to spirituality. . . . The spirits which people see are
invariably in the form of human beings, and that very fact is enough of
itself to prove that these apparitions cannot be the souls of dead men.
If a sack is filled with grain, it will stand up, and is obviously a
sack of grain; but if the sack is burst and the grain falls out, then it
collapses and disappears from view. Now, man's soul is enfolded in his
body as grain in a sack. When he dies his body decays and his vitality
is dissipated; and if when the grain is taken away the sack loses its
form, why, when the vitality is gone, should the body obtain a new shape
in which to appear again in the world? . . . The number of persons who
have died since the world began, old, middle-aged, and young, must run
into thousands of millions, far exceeding the number of persons alive at
the present day. If every one of these has become a disembodied spirit,
there must be at least one to every yard as we walk along the road; and
those who die must now suddenly find themselves face to face with vast
crowds of spirits, filling every house and street. . . . People say that
spirits are the souls of dead men. That being the case, spirits should
always appear naked, for surely it is not contended that clothes have
souls as well as men. . . . It can further be shown not only that dead
men never become spirits, but also that they are without consciousness,
by the fact that before birth they are without consciousness. Before
birth man rests in the First Cause; when he dies he goes back to the
First Cause. The First Cause is vague and without form, and man's soul
is there in a state of unconsciousness. At death the soul reverts to its
original state: how then can it possess consciousness? . . . As a matter
of fact, the universe is full of disembodied spirits, but these are not
the souls of dead men. They are beings only of the mind, conjured up
for the most part in sickness, when the patient is especially subject to
fear. For sickness induces fear of spirits; fear of spirits causes the
mind to dwell upon them; and thus apparitions are produced."
Another writer enlarges on the view that _kuei_ "disembodied spirit" is
the same as _kuei_ "to return." "At death, man's soul returns to heaven,
his flesh to earth, his blood to water, his blood-vessels to marshes,
his voice to thunder, his motion to the wind, his sleep to the sun and
moon, his bones to trees, his muscles to hills, his teeth to stones, his
fat to dew, his hair to grass, while his breath returns to man."
Attributes of God.--There was a certain philosopher, named Ch'in Mi
(died A.D. 226), whose services were much required by the King of Wu,
who sent an envoy to fetch him. The envoy took upon himself to catechise
the philosopher, with the following result:--
"You are engaged in study, are you not?" asked the envoy.
"Any slip of a boy may be that," replied Ch'in; "why not I?"
"Has God a head?" said the envoy.
"He has," was the reply.
"Where is He?" was the next question.
"In the West. The _Odes_ say,
He gazed fondly on the West,
From which it may be inferred that his head was in the West."
"Has God got ears?"
"God sits on high," replied Ch'in, "but hears the lowly. The _Odes_ say,
The crane cries in the marsh,
And its cry is heard by God.
If He had not ears, how could He hear it?"
"Has God feet?" asked the envoy.
"He has," replied Ch'in. "The _Odes_ say,
The steps of God are difficult;
This man does not follow them.
If He had no feet, how could He step?"
"Has God a surname?" enquired the envoy. "And if so, what is it?"
"He has a surname," said Ch'in, "and it is Liu."
"How do you know that?" rejoined the other.
"The surname of the Emperor, who is the Son of Heaven, is Liu," replied
Ch'in; "and that is how I know it."
These answers, we are told, came as quickly as echo after sound. A
writer of the ninth century A.D., when reverence for the one God of
ancient China had been to a great extent weakened by the multiplication
of inferior deities, tells a story how this God, whose name was Liu, had
been displaced by another God whose name was Chang.
The _Hsing ying tsa lu_ has the following story. There was once a very
poor scholar, who made it his nightly practice to burn incense and pray
to God. One evening he heard a voice from above, saying, "God has been
touched by your earnestness, and has sent me to ask what you require."
"I wish," replied the scholar, "for clothes and food, coarse if you
will, sufficient for my necessities in this life, and to be able to
roam, free from care, among the mountains and streams, until I complete
my allotted span; that is all." "All!" cried the voice, amid peals of
laughter from the clouds. "Why, that is the happiness enjoyed by the
spirits in heaven; you can't have that. Ask rather for wealth and rank."
Good and Evil.--It has already been stated that the Chinese imagination
has never conceived of an Evil One, deliverance from whom might be
secured by prayer. The existence of evil in the abstract has however
received some attention.
Wei Tao Tzu asked Yu Li Tzu, saying, "Is it true that God loves good and
hates evil?"
"It is," replied Yu.
"In that case," rejoined Wei, "goodness should abound in the Empire
and evil should be scarce. Yet among birds, kites and falcons outnumber
phoenixes; among beasts, wolves are many and unicorns are few; among
growing plants, thorns are many and cereals are few; among those who eat
cooked food and stand erect, the wicked are many and the virtuous are
few; and in none of these cases can you say that the latter are evil and
the former good. Can it be possible that what man regards as evil, God
regards as good, and _vice versa_? Is it that God is unable to determine
the characteristics of each, and lets each follow its own bent and
develop good or evil accordingly? If He allows good men to be put upon,
and evil men to be a source of fear, is not this to admit that God has
His likes and dislikes? From of old until now, times of misgovernment
have always exceeded times of right government; and when men of
principle have contended with the ignoble, the latter have usually won.
Where then is God's love of good and hatred of evil?"
Yu Li Tzu had no answer to make.
The _Tan yen tsa lu_ says, "If the people are contented and happy, God
is at peace in His mind. When God is at peace in His mind, the two great
motive Powers act in harmony."
Where is God?--The _Pi ch'ou_ says, "The empyrean above you is not God;
it is but His outward manifestation. That which remains ever fixed in
man's heart and which rules over all things without cease, that is
God. Alas, you earnestly seek God in the blue sky, while forgetting Him
altogether in your hearts. Can you expect your prayers to be answered?"
This view--"For behold, the kingdom of God is within you," St. Luke
xvii. 21,--has been brought out by the philosopher Shao Yung, A.D.
1011-1077, in the following lines:--
The heavens are still: no sound.
Where then shall God be found? . . .
Search not in distant skies;
In man's own heart He lies.
Conflict of Faiths.--Han Wen-kung, A.D. 768-824, the eminent
philosopher, poet, and statesman, who suffered banishment for his
opposition to the Buddhist religion, complains that, "of old there was
but one faith; now there are three,"--meaning Confucianism, Buddhism,
and Taoism. He thus pictures the simplicity of China's ancient kings:--
"Their clothes were of cloth or of silk. They dwelt in palaces or in
ordinary houses. They ate grain and vegetables and fruit and fish and
flesh. Their method was easy of comprehension: their doctrines were
easily carried into practice. Hence their lives passed pleasantly away,
a source of satisfaction to themselves, a source of benefit to mankind.
At peace within their own hearts, they readily adapted themselves to
the necessities of the family and of the State. Happy in life, they were
remembered after death. Their sacrifices were grateful to the God of
Heaven, and the spirits of the departed rejoiced in the honours of
ancestral worship."
His mind seems to have been open on the subject of a future state. In a
lamentation on the death of a favourite nephew, he writes,
"If there is knowledge after death, this separation will be but for a
little while. If there is no knowledge after death, so will this sorrow
be but for a little while, and then no more sorrow for ever."
His views as to the existence of spirits on this earth are not very
logical:--
"If there is whistling among the rafters, and I take a light but fail to
see anything,--is that a spirit? It is not; for spirits are soundless.
If there is something in the room, and I look for it but cannot see
it,--is that a spirit? It is not; spirits are formless. If something
brushes against me, and I grab at, but do not seize it,--is that a
spirit? It is not; for if spirits are soundless and formless, how can
they have substance?
"If then spirits have neither sound nor form nor substance, are they
consequently non-existent? Things which have form without sound exist in
nature; for instance, earth, and stones. Things which have sound without
form exist in nature; for instance, wind, and thunder. Things which have
both sound and form exist in nature; for instance, men, and animals.
And things which have neither sound nor form also exist in nature; for
instance, disembodied spirits and angels."
For his own poetical spirit, according to the funeral elegy written
some two hundred and fifty years after his death, a great honour was
reserved:--
Above in heaven there was no music, and God was sad,
And summoned him to his place beside the Throne.
His friend and contemporary, Liu Tsung-yuan, a poet and philosopher like
himself, was tempted into the following reflections by the contemplation
of a beautiful landscape which he discovered far from the beaten
track:--
"Now, I have always had my doubts about the existence of a God; but this
scene made me think He really must exist. At the same time, however,
I began to wonder why He did not place it in some worthy centre of
civilisation, rather than in this out-of-the-way barbarous region, where
for centuries there has been no one to enjoy its beauty. And so, on the
other hand, such waste of labour and incongruity of position disposed me
to think that there could not be a God after all."
Letter from God.--In A.D. 1008 there was a pretended revelation from God
in the form of a letter, recalling the letter from Christ on the neglect
of the Sabbath mentioned by Roger of Wendover and Hoveden, contemporary
chroniclers. The Emperor and his Court regarded this communication with
profound awe; but a high official of the day said, "I have learnt (from
the Confucian Discourses) that God does not even speak; how then should
He write a letter?"
Modern Materialism.--The philosopher and commentator, Chu Hsi, A.D.
1130-1200, whose interpretations of the Confucian Canon are the only
ones now officially recognised, has done more than any one since
Confucius himself to disseminate a rigid materialism among his
fellow-countrymen. The "God" of the Canon is explained away as an
"Eternal Principle;" the phenomena of the universe are attributed to
Nature, with its absurd personification so commonly met with in Western
writers; and spirits generally are associated with the perfervid
imaginations of sick persons and enthusiasts.
"Is consciousness dispersed after death, or does it still exist?" said
an enquirer.
"It is not dispersed," replied Chu Hsi; "it is at an end. When vitality
comes to an end, consciousness comes to an end with it."
He got into more trouble over the verse quoted earlier,
King Wen is on high,
In glory in heaven.
His comings and his goings
Are to and from the presence of God.
"If it is asserted," he argued, "that King Wen was really in the
presence of God, and that there really is such a Being as God, He
certainly cannot have the form in which He is represented by the clay
or wooden images in vogue. Still, as these statements were made by the
Prophets of old, there must have been some foundation for them."
There is, however, a certain amount of inconsistency in his writings on
the supernatural, for in another passage he says,
"When God is about to send down calamities upon us, He first raises up
the hero whose genius shall finally prevail against those calamities."
Sometimes he seems to be addressing the educated Confucianist; at other
times, the common herd whose weaknesses have to be taken into account.