Page:Columbia University Lectures on Literature (1911).djvu/87

Rh With all the disappointments he encountered in life, Confucius has certainly had great influence on the development of the Chinese national character. This influence was of a threefold kind. It was based on his writings, on his sayings, and on the example of his personal life. He did not write much himself, but he did important editorial work; and his sayings were collected and placed on record for the benefit of later centuries by the followers of his disciples, so that a number of works may be said to have seen the light under his inspiration. These are the works which the late Professor Legge, their translator and commentator, has called the "Chinese Classics." They consist of two series of books, the so-called "Five Canons" (wu-king), works of pre-Confucian origin, but partly edited or compiled by the sage himself, and the "Four Books" (ssï-shu), texts connected with Confucius' life and teachings, but written and edited by later authors.

The books to be included in or excluded from these classics have in the course of centuries been subject to changes at the hands of critics; but at present the following standard is recognized.

A. The "Five Canons" (wu-king) comprise the following works:—

(1) The "Canon of Changes" (I-king), now probably the oldest book extant of the Chinese, mainly a work on divination, based on the so-called pa-kua, the Eight Mystic Diagrams, supposed to have been invented by the legendary emperor Fu-hi. They consist of a series of combinations of broken and unbroken lines, the former representing the female, the latter the male, principle in Chinese natural philosophy.

It has always impressed me as one of the secrets of the origin of language, as well as of mankind, why early man assigned sex or gender—male, female, or neuter—to every object of nature. It must be one of the earliest traditions of mankind that, for instance, a stone cannot be merely a stone pure and simple, but that it must also be either a man or a