LIU YIN.
a.d. 1241-1293
[A promising official who was prevented by failing health from rising to eminence. He lived a retired life in a cottage which he named “Peace with Culture.”]
DESIGN.
WHEN God made man, he gave him powers to cope with the exigencies of his environment; and resources within himself, so that he need not be dependent upon external circumstances [for good or evil].
Thus, in districts where poisons abound, antidotes abound also; and in others, where malaria prevails, we find such correctives as ginger, nutmegs, and dog-wood. Again, fish, terrapins, and clams, are the most wholesome articles of diet in excessively damp climates, though themselves denizens of the water; and musk and deer-horns are excellent prophylactics in earthy climates, where in fact they are produced. For, if these things were unable to prevail against their surroundings, they could not possibly thrive where they do; while the fact that they do so thrive is proof positive that they were ordained as specifics against those surroundings.
Chu Hsi said, “When God is about to send down calamities upon us, he first raises up the hero whose genius shall finally prevail against those calamities.” From this point of view, there can be no living man without his appointed use; nor any state of society which man should be unable to put right.
