determining the category of meaning to which the compound belongs. It was the earliest figure employed to indicate spiritual beings, and enters into characters denoting spirits, sacrifices, and prayer[1]. That on the right, called It, is phonetic, but even it is the symbol for "a vessel used in performing rites;" and if, as the Khang- hsî dictionary seems to say, it was anciently used alone for the present compound, still the spiritual significance would attach to it, and the addition of the khih to complete the character, whensoever it was made, shows that the makers considered the rites in which the vessel was used to possess in the first place a religious import.
Lî is a symbol |
Next, the character is used, in moral and philosophical disquisitions, to designate one of the primary constituents of human nature. Those, as set forth by Mencius, are four; "not fused into us from without," not produced, that is, by any force of circumstances "belonging naturally to us, as our four limbs do." They are benevolence (zăn), righteousness (î), propriety (lî), and understanding (kîh). Our possession of the first is proved by the feeling of distress at the sight of suffering; of the second, by our feelings of shame and dislike; of the third, by our feelings of modesty and courtesy; of the fourth, by our consciousness of approving and disapproving[2].
Thus the character It, in the concrete application of it, denotes the manifestations, and in its imperative use, the rules, of propriety. This twofold symbolism of it—the religious and the moral—must be kept in mind in the study of our classic. A life ordered in harmony with it would realise the highest Chinese ideal, and surely a very high ideal, of human character.
But never and nowhere has it been possible for men to maintain this high standard of living. In China and elsewhere the lî have become, in the usages of society in its various relationships, matters of course, forms without the
