Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/77

 us by Chinese as an actual rush of breath, or wind, from the heart to the head, which flushes the face and stiffens the muscles of the neck. No difference is allowed between the material and the immaterial, the cause and the effect. An angry man is said to shêng ch'i, produce breath or air, and this air is anger, the too great predominance or inrush of which into the human system is apt to bring about insanity or even death. It is a purely physical, not a mental, phenomenon in the eyes of native physicists; or, rather, the Chinese system does not recognise or admit of any element of the immaterial whatever. Another curious example is afforded by the use of the word hsin or heart, and the sense in which it is understood. In discussing metaphysical subjects with a cultured Chinese it is almost impossible to make him distinguish clearly between the physical organ and the word in its popular acceptation of mind. In the study of Taoist books the distinction is still more difficult to trace. But it is in what may be called the popular philosophy of the common people that the most glorious confusion arises. There we find the actual blood-pump made the seat or embodiment of the man's mental and moral characteristics; so much so, that every form of what we understand by the term heart-disease should logically be regarded as the sign of some special depravity or sin. Hence comes the curious Chinese doctrine of the effect of climate upon character. Now, the Chinese are sufficiently well acquainted with the functions of the heart, and the relation to that organ of the blood. They know that for perfect health of body it is necessary that the blood should be kept completely pure, and that everything that taints the blood has an injurious effect upon the heart, through which it passes. E