figured, and (by means of the diagrams) represented their material forms and their character[1].'
All that is thus predicated of the sage, or ancient sages, though the writer probably had Fû-hsî in his mind, is more than sufficiently extravagant, and reminds us of the language in 'the Doctrine of the Mean,' that 'the sage, able to assist the transforming and nourishing powers of heaven and earth, may with heaven and earth form a ternion[2].'
I quoted largely, in the second chapter, from this Appendix the accounts which it gives of the formation of the lineal figures. There is no occasion to return to that subject. Let us suppose the figures formed. They seem to have the significance, when looked at from certain Divination. points of view, which have been determined for us by king Wăn and the duke of Kâu. But this does not amount to divination. How can the lines be made to serve this purpose? The Appendix professes to tell us.
Before touching on the method which it describes, let me observe that divination was practised in China from a very early time. I will not say 5,200 years Ancient divination. ago, in the days of Fû-hsî, for I cannot repress doubts of his historical personality; but as soon as we tread the borders of something like credible history, we find it existing. In the Shû King, in a document that purports to be of the twenty-third century B.C.[3], divination by means of the tortoise-shell is mentioned; and somewhat later we find that method continuing, and also divination by the lineal figures, manipulated by means of the stalks of a plant[4], the Ptarmica Sibirica[5], which is still cultivated on and about the grave of Confucius, where I have myself seen it growing.
The object of the divination, it should be acknowledged, was not to discover future events absolutely, Object of the divination. as if they could be known beforehand[6], but
- ↑ III, i, 38 (chap. 8. 1).
- ↑ Doctrine of the Mean, chap. xxii.
- ↑ The Shû II, ii, 18.
- ↑ The Shû V, iv, 20, 31.
- ↑ See Williams' Syllabic Dictionary on the character 蓍.
- ↑ Canon McClatchie (first paragraph of his Introduction) says:—'The Yî is regarded by the Chinese with peculiar veneration…as containing a mine of
