Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/361

 be the chief of those Ch‘i whose business it is to take charge of rain and thunder. It now became his business to create rain at the proper time, to disperse the clouds when they were likely to be the cause of floods, not to allow the wind to increase to a storm, and only to permit the thunder to exercise its power for the purpose of frightening the wicked and of occasioning their repentance. He received four-and-twenty adjutants, to each of whom his own special inspectorship was intrusted, and this was changed every fortnight: of these, some were put in charge of other departments. The Chinese have five elements, and these, too, were given chiefs. To one Sh&#259;n was given the oversight of fire, with reference to conflagrations; six Sh&#259;ns were appointed over epidemics, and received orders with a view to the alleviation of the troubles of human society, to purge it from time to time from superabundance of population. After all the offices were distributed, the book was given back to the Emperor, and to this day it constitutes the astrological part of the calendar. Two directories appear every year in China; one relates to the mandarins, the other to the invisible officials, the Ch‘i [viz., Sh&#259;n who have become such]. In case of the failure of crops, conflagrations, floods, &c., the Ch‘i who are concerned are dismissed, their images thrown down, and fresh Ch‘i appointed. Thus the lordship of the Emperor over nature is here a completely organised monarchy.

There were besides among the Chinese a class of men who occupied themselves inwardly, who not only belonged to the general State religion of T‘ien, but formed a sect who gave themselves up to thought, and sought to attain to consciousness of what the True is. The first stage of advance out of that earliest attitude of natural religion (which was, that immediate self-consciousness in its very immediateness, knows itself to be what is highest, to be the sovereign power) is the return of consciousness into itself, the claim that consciousness