Text of Confucianism Part 02

SR No.: 007676
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: James Legge
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1882
Total Pages: 2405
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 43 MB

Page 401

374
are no (agencies) greater than those of the stalks and the tortoise-shell.
THE APPENDIXES.
SECT. I.
73. Therefore Heaven produced the spirit-like things, and the sages took advantage of them. (The operations of) heaven and earth are marked by (so many) changes and transformations; and the sages imitated them (by means of the Yi). Heaven hangs out its (brilliant) figures from which are seen good fortune and bad, and the sages made their emblematic interpretations accordingly. The Ho gave forth the map, and the Lo the writing, of (both of) which the sages took advantage.
74. In the (scheme of the) Yt there are the four symbolic figures by which they inform men (in divining of the lines making up the diagrams); the explanations appended to them convey the significance (of the diagrams and lines); and the determination (of the divination) as fortunate or the reverse, to settle the doubts (of men).
Chapter XI, paragraphs 66-74, treats of divination, and the scheme of it supplied in the Yi. That scheme must be referred first to Heaven, which produced the spirit-like things,—the diviningplant and the tortoise; and next to the sages, who knew the mind of Heaven, and made the plant and shell subservient to the purpose for which they were intended.
Paragraph 66 answers the question of what the Yî does; and if there were truth or reason in it, the book and its use would be most important. I have closed the quotation of "the Master's" words at the end of the paragraph; but really we do not know if they extend so far, or farther.
Paragraphs 67 and 68 glorify the sages and their work. The virtues of the divining-plant all belonged to them, and it was thus that they were able to organise the scheme of divination. The production of 'the spirit-like things' is, in paragraph 73, ascribed to 'Heaven;' the characters about them in these paragraphs mean no more than is expressed in the translation.
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