But the effective weapon which was thus placed in the hands of the poets and authors of ancient Greece and Rome has been completely denied to Chinese writers. As has been explained, the language is absolutely without inflexion, and the grammar consists so entirely of syntax, that no word can be moved out of its determined position in a sentence, without either changing its value or rendering it meaningless. Thus the literature has lost much of the variety and elegance which belongs by nature to that of the polysyllabic languages. And we might go beyond this and say that the lack of that power of expression which is given by syntactical motion has been accompanied by a blighting influence on the imaginations of Chinese authors. Other causes, to which reference will presently be made, are also to some extent responsible for this result; but in our review of the various branches of Chinese literature, we shall find that those which are most dependent for their successful development on the powers of imagination are those which least repay attention, and that the more excellent are those which contain simple narrations of facts, or consist of the arguments of the philosopher or of the man of science.
But notwithstanding this the Chinese are eminently a literary, in the sense of a reading, people. The system of making competitive examinations the only royal road to posts of honour and emolument, and the law which throws these open to everybody who chooses to compete, have caused a wider diffusion of book learning among the Chinese than is probably to be found among any other people. As to the date when the literature first took its rise, it is impossible to speak with any certainty. The vicissitudes which attended the early manuscripts and books which were collected by private individuals and in the imperial libraries have been such as to render the preservation of any ancient record a matter of wonder. Constant references are found in books to works which are said to have existed at early dates, but of many of these the titles are all that remain to us now.
One of the earliest published works on which we can lay our hands is the Book of Changes, the first, and the most revered, because the least understood, of the nine classics. This work first saw the light within a prison's walls. In the year 1150 B.C. its author Wăn Wang was, we are told, imprisoned for a political offence, and sought to while away the tedium of his confinement by tracing out a system of general philosophy from the eight diagrams and their 64 combinations invented by the Emperor Fu-he. These diagrams have been likened to the mystical numbers of Pythagoras, and the leading idea of Wăn Wang's system seems to have been founded upon the Chinese notions of the creation of the world, according to which all material things proceed from two great male and female vivifying elements, the Yin and the Yang, which in their turn owe their existence to the Tai keih, or the first great cause. As Sir John Davis says, this “might, with no great impropriety, be styled a sexual system of the universe. They, that is to say the Chinese, maintain that when from the union of the Yang and the Yin all existences, both animate and inanimate, had been produced, the sexual principle was conveyed to and became inherent in all of them. Thus heaven, the sun, day, &c., are considered of the male gender; earth, the moon, night, &c., of the female. This notion pervades every department of knowledge in China. It exists in their theories of anatomy and medicine, and is constantly referred to on every subject. The chief divinities worshipped by the emperor as high priest of the state religion are heaven and earth, which in this sense appear to answer in some degree to the οὐρανός and γῆ in the cosmogony of the Greeks.“
The style and matter of Wăn Wang's writings were, however, so cramped and vague that Confucius among others attempted the task of elucidating their dark places. Many years the sage spent in endeavours to make straight that which was so crooked; and the only result attained has been to add some inexplicable chapters to an incomprehensible book. But the fact that it gave rise to a system of divination saved it from sharing the fate which, in the year 221 B.C., befell all books except those on medicine, divination, and husbandry, at the hand of the Emperor Che Hwang-ti of the Tsin dynasty. This monarch ordered, for political reasons, the destruction of all the books to be found within the empire, except those on the subjects just mentioned. Fortunately, no monarch, however powerful, is able to carry out to the letter an order of so inquisitorial a nature; and the roofs of houses, the walls of dwellings, and even the beds of rivers, became the receptacles of the literary treasures of the nation until the tyranny was overpast. The works of Confucius, the Book of History, the Book of Odes, the Spring and Autumn Annals, together with the Book of Rites, and the Four Books by the disciples of the sage and of Mencius, were all alike condemned to the flames. How all these were preserved we know not, but history tells us that, when in after years efforts were made to restore the Book of History, 28 sections out of the 100 composing the entire work were taken down from the lips of a blind man who had treasured them in his memory. One other was recovered from a young girl in the province of Honan. And these are all which would probably have come down to us, had not a complete copy been found secreted in the wall of Confucius's house, when it was pulled down in the year 140 B.C.
This Book of History takes us back to about the time of Noah. It consists of a number of records of the Yu, Hea, Shang, and Chow dynasties, embracing the period from the middle of the 24th century B.C. to 721 B.C. These, and a number of other MSS., attracted the attention of Confucius when he was at the court of Chow, and selecting those which he deemed of value, he compiled them in a work which he called the Shoo king or Book of History.
This work, as Mr Wells Williams says, “contains the seeds of all things that are valuable in the estimation of the Chinese; it is at once the foundation of their political system, their history, and their religious rites, the basis of their tactics, music, and astronomy.” For the most part it consists of conversations between the kings and their ministers, in which are traced out the same patriarchal principles of government as guide the rulers of the empire at the present day. “Virtue,” said the minister Yih, addressing the emperor, “is the basis of good government; and this consists first in procuring for the people the things necessary for their sustenance, such as water, fire, metals, wood, and grain. The ruler must also think of rendering them virtuous, and of preserving them from whatever can injure life and health. When you would caution them, use gentle words, when you would correct, employ authority.” “Do not be ashamed of mistakes, and thus make them crimes,” was another piece of wholesome advice offered to the emperor by his advisers, the effect of which is still observable in the outspoken confessions of official incompetence which are daily to be met with in the columns of the Peking Gazette.
