Sacred Books of the East/Volume 27/The Lî Kî/Chapter 2



and arrangement of the threads. Wyhe's "Book of Rites" and Callery's "Memorial des Rites" always failed to give me a definite idea of the nature of our classic Sze mâ Khien's work is called Sze Kî, or Historical Records and Lî Kî might in the same way be rendered "Cere momal Records" but I have preferred to give for the title—"A Collection of Treatises on the Rulês of Propriety or Ceremonial Usages".

3. The value of the work has been discussed fully by P. Callery in the sixth paragraph of the Introduction to his translation of an abbreviated edition of it, and with much of what he has said I am happy to feel myself in accord. I agree with him for instance, that the book is "the most exact and complete monography which the Chinese nation has been able to give of itself to the rest of the human race." But this sentence occurs in a description of the Chinese spirit which is little better than a caricature. "Le cérénomal," he says, "résume l'esprit Chinois. Ses affections si elle en a, sont satisfaites par le cérémonial, ses devoirs elle les remplit au moyen du cérémonial, la vertu et le vice elle les reconnait au cérémonial en un mot, pour elle le cérémonial c est l'homme, l'homme moral, l'homme politique l'homme religieux dans ses multiples rapports avec la famille, la societe l'état la morale et la religion."

To all this representation the first sentence of our classic is a sufficient reply.—"Always and in everything let there be reverence." In hundreds of other passages the same thing is insisted on,—that ceremony without an inspiring reverence is nothing. I do not deny that there is much attention to forms in China with a forgetfulness of the spirit that should animate them. But where is the nation against whose people the same thing may not be charged? The treaties of western nations with China contain an article stipulating for the toleration of Chinese Christians on the ground that. The Christian religion as professed by

Protestants or Roman Catholics, inculcates the practice of virtue and teaches man to do as he would be done by Scores of Chinese officers scholars and others have in conversations with myself asked if such were indeed the nature of Christianity appealing at the same time to certain things which they alleged that made them doubt it. All that can be said in the matter is this that as the creeds of men elsewhere are often better than their practice so it is in China. Whether it be more so there or here is a point on which different conclusions will be come to, according to the knowledge and prejudices of the speculators.

More may be learned about the religion of the ancient Chinese from this classic than from all the others together. Where the writers got their information about the highest Worship and sacrifices of the most ancient times and about the schools of Shun we do not know. They expressed the view s doubtless that were current during the Han dynasty derived partly from tradition and partly from old books which were not gathered up or possibly from both those sources. But let not readers expect to find in the Lî Kî anything like a theology. The want of dogmatic teaching of religion in the Confucian system may not be all a disadvantage and defect but there is a certain amount of melancholy truth m the following observations of Callery.—"Le Lî Kî celui de tous les King ou les questions religieuses auraient dû être traitées tout naturellement a propos des sacrifices au Ciel aux Dieux tutélaires et aux ancêtres ghsse legerement sur tout ce qui est de pure spéculation et ne mentionne ces graves matieres qu avec une extrême indifférence. Selon moi ceci prouve deux choses la piemiere que dans les temps anciens les plus grand génies de la Chine n ont posséde sur le créateur sur la nature et les destines de l'âme que des notions obscures, incertames et souvent contradictoires la seconde, que les Chinois possèdent a un tres faible degre le sentiment re ligieux, et qu'ils n'éprouvent pas comme les races de 