Page:China- Its State and Prospects.djvu/213

Rh conceit, they had derived by tradition from the patriarchal age, some notion of an universal sovereign, who exercises unlimited control, and to whom all honour is due. The book of odes, part of which was written B. C. 1120, speaks of the imperial supreme, as "majestic in his descending, surveying the inhabitants of the world, and promoting their tranquillity;" who is to be worshipped and served with abstinence and lustrations; while he takes cognizance of the affairs of men, and rewards or punishes them according to their deeds.

Chinese philosophers have also spoken much of a "principle of order," by which the universe is regulated, and which is accounted by them the soul of the world. The heavens and earth, together with all animate and inanimate things are, according to them, but one principle, which is as universally diffused through nature as water through the ocean. To this principle they attribute the power of retribution, and say of the wicked that, "though they may escape the meshes of terrestrial law, the celestial principle certainly will not endure them."

From these expressions, about "heaven," the "Supreme ruler," and the "principle of order," we might infer that the Chinese had some knowledge of the Ruler of the universe, and honoured him as such, were we not baffled by the very incoherent manner in which they express themselves, and shocked at the propensity to materialism which they constantly exhibit.

When describing the origin of the world, they talk in the following strain: "Before heaven and earth were divided, there existed one universal chaos; when the two energies of nature were gradually distinguished, and the yin and yang, or the male and female