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CH. III.
INTRODUCTION.
53
by the six children,' or minor trigrams,— water and fire, thunder and wind, mountains and collections of water. Ka Hsî says, that there is that in the paragraph which he does not understand. Some Chinese scholars, however, have not been far from descrying the light that is in it. Let Liang Yin, of our fourteenth century, be adduced as an example of them. He says :—The spirit here simply means God. God is the personality (literally, the body or substantiality) of the Spirit; the Spirit is God in operation. He who is lord over and rules all things is God; the subtle presence and operation of God with all things is by His Spirit.' The language is in fine accord with the definition of shăn or spirit, given in the 3rd Appendix, Section i, 32.
I wish that the Treatise on the Trigrams had ended with the 10th paragraph. The writer had gradually risen to a noble
Concluding elevation of thought from which he plunges
paragraphs. into a slough of nonsensical remarks which it would be difficult elsewhere to parallel. I have referred on p. 31 to the judgment of P. Regis about them. He could not receive them as from Confucius, and did not take the trouble to translate them, and transfer them to his own pages. My plan required me to translate everything published in China as a part of the Yî King ; but I have given my reasons for doubting whether any portion of these Appendixes be really from Confucius. There is nothing that could better justify the supercilious disregard with which the classical literature of China is frequently treated than to insist on the concluding portion of this treatise as being from the pencil of its greatest sage. I have dwelt at some length on the 14th paragraph, because of its mythological semblance; but among the eight paragraphs that follow it, it would be difficult to award the palm for silliness. They are descriptive of the eight trigrams, and each one enumerates a dozen or more objects of which its subject is symbolical. The writer must have been fond of and familiar with horses. Khien, the symbol properly of heaven, suggests to him the idea of a good horse ; an old horse ; a lean horse; and a piebald. Kăn, the symbol of thunder, suggests the
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| SR No. | 007676 |
| Book Title | Text of Confucianism Part 02 |
| 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 |