Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 3.djvu/172



him on the principles of government; and the result was that he communicated to him this Great Plan, with its nine divisions. When we read the Book, we see that it belonged originally to the time of Hsiâ, and that the larger portion of it should be ascribed to the Great Yü, and was as old, indeed, as the reign of Yâo. How it had come into the possession of the count of Khî we cannot tell. Nor does it appear how far the language of it should be ascribed to him. That the larger portion of it had come down from the times of Hsiâ is not improbable. The use of the number nine and other numbers, and the naming of the various divisions of the Plan, are in harmony with Yü's style and practice in his Counsels in the second Part of our Classic, and in the second Part also of the Tribute of Yü. We are told in the introductory sentences, that Heaven or God gave the Plan with its divisions to Yü. To explain the way in which the gift was made, there is a tradition about a mysterious tortoise that appeared in the waters of the Lo, bearing well-defined marks on its back from one to nine, and that thereupon Yü determined the meaning of those marks and of their numbers, and completed the nine divisions of the Plan. Of this legend, however, it is not necessary to speak in connexion with the Shû, which does not mention it; it will come up in connexion with the translation of the Yî King.

The Great Plan means the great model for the government of the nation,—the method by which the people may be rendered happy and tranquil, in harmony with their condition, through the perfect character of the king, and his perfect administration of government.

P. Gaubil says that the Book is a treatise at once of physics, astrology, divination, morals, politics, and religion, and that it has a sufficiently close resemblance to the work of Ocellus the Lucanian. There is a shadowy resemblance between the Great Plan and the curious specimen of Pythagorean doctrine which we have in the treatise on the Universe; but the dissimilarities are still greater and more numerous. More especially are the differences between the Greek mind, speculative, and the Chinese mind, practical, apparent in the two works. Where the Chinese writer loses himself in the sheerest follies of his imagining, he yet gropes about for a rule to be of use in the conduct of human affairs.

The whole of the treatise is divided into three chapters. The first is introductory, and relates how the Great Plan with its