________________
264
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
better name, to accept Ti or Shang-ti for God, would shrink from translating these terms by God when they occur in the writings of Confucius. As Professor Legge, during his long stay in China, has been one of the most strenuous defenders of the name Shang-ti as the best rendering of God in Chinese, you complain that he should have taken advantage of his position, as one of my fellow-workers in the translation of The Sacred Books of the East,' and have translated Shang-ti, whenever it occurs in the Shu-king and Shih-king, by God, expressing, at the same time, his conviction that 'the Ti and Shang-ti of the Chinese classics is God, our God, the true God.' You also blame me, as editor of The Sacred Books of the East,' for not having helil with a steady hand the balance between the two parties in a difficult and still open contention, particularly as I had promised that these translations, offered to the public under the auspices of the University of Oxford, should be complete, trustworthy, and readable; and you call on me to repair the injustice which has been done to those who differ from Dr. Legge in his views on the true meaning of the words Ti and Shang-ti.
Allow me to state, in reply to your letter, that, so far as the so-called Term Question is concerned, I had, nearly thirty years ago (Edinburgh Review, October, 1852), expressed my conviction that it would be impossible to find in Chinese a more adequate rendering of God than Shang-ti. On that point, therefore, I could hardly claim now to be an impartial judge.
But this, as you yourselves admity is not really the question which concerns the translator or the editor of The Sacred Books of the East. The question on which, with the assistance of my learned friend, Dr. Legge, I was called upon to form an opinion when examining his translation of the Shu-king and Shih-king, forming the third volume of my series, was whether Ti and Shang-ti, when they occur in Chinese, should be rendered in English by God. On this
