"God is a principle which exists by virtue of its own intrinsicality, and operates spontaneously without self-manifestation.
"He who knows what God is, and what Man is, has attained. Knowing what God is, he knows that he himself proceeded therefrom. Knowing what Man is, he rests in the knowledge of the known, waiting for the knowledge of the unknown.
"The ultimate end is God. He is manifested in the laws of nature. He is the hidden spring. At the beginning of all things, He was."
Taoism, however, does not seem to have succeeded altogether, any more than Confucianism, in altogether estranging the Chinese people from their traditions of a God, more or less personal, whose power was the real determining factor in human events. The great general Hsiang Yu, B.C. 233-202, said to his charioteer at the battle which proved fatal to his fortunes, "I have fought no fewer than seventy fights, and have gained dominion over the empire. That I am now brought to this pass is because God has deserted me."
CHAPTER IV — MATERIALISM
Yang Hsiung.—Yang Hsiung was a philosopher who flourished B.C. 53 - A.D. 18. He taught that the nature of man at birth is neither good nor evil, but a mixture of both, and that development in either direction depends wholly upon environment. To one who asked about God, he replied, "What have I to do with God? Watch how without doing anything He does all things." To another who said, "Surely it is God who fashions and adorns all earthly forms," he replied, "Not so; if God in an earthly sense were to fashion and adorn all things, His strength would not be adequate to the task."
Wang Ch'ung.—Wang Ch'ung, A.D. 27-97, denies that men after death live again as spiritual beings on earth. "Animals," he argues, "do not become spirits after death; why should man alone undergo this change? . . . That which informs man at birth is vitality, and at death this vitality is extinguished. Vitality is produced by the pulsations of the blood; when these cease, vitality is extinguished, the body decays, and becomes dust. How can it become a spirit? . . . When a man dies, his soul ascends to heaven, and his bones return (kuei) to earth; therefore he is spoken of as a disembodied spirit (kuei), the latter word really meaning that which has returned. . . . Vitality becomes humanity, just as water becomes ice. The ice melts and is water again; man dies and reverts to spirituality. . . . The spirits which people see are invariably in the form of human beings, and that very fact is enough of itself to prove that these apparitions cannot be the souls of dead men. If a sack is filled with grain, it will stand up, and is obviously a sack of grain; but if the sack is burst and the grain falls out, then it collapses and disappears from view. Now, man's soul is enfolded in his body as grain in a sack. When he dies his body decays and his vitality is dissipated; and if when the grain is taken away the sack loses its form, why, when the vitality is gone, should the body obtain a new shape in which to appear again in the world? . . . The number of persons who have died since the world began, old, middle-aged, and young, must run into thousands of millions, far exceeding the number of persons alive at the present day. If every one of these has become a disembodied spirit, there must be at least one to every yard as we walk along the road; and those who die must now suddenly find themselves face to face with vast crowds of spirits, filling every house and street. . . . People say that spirits are the souls of dead men. That being the case, spirits should always appear naked, for surely it is not contended that clothes have souls as well as men. . . . It can further be shown not only that dead men never become spirits, but also that they are without consciousness, by the fact that before birth they are without consciousness. Before birth man rests in the First Cause; when he dies he goes back to the First Cause. The First Cause is vague and without form, and man's soul is there in a state of unconsciousness. At death the soul reverts to its original state: how then can it possess consciousness? . . . As a matter of fact, the universe is full of disembodied spirits, but these are not the souls of dead men. They are beings only of the mind, conjured up for the most part in sickness, when the patient is especially subject to fear. For sickness induces fear of spirits; fear of spirits causes the mind to dwell upon them; and thus apparitions are produced."
Another writer enlarges on the view that kuei "disembodied spirit" is the same as kuei "to return." "At death, man's soul returns to heaven, his flesh to earth, his blood to water, his blood-vessels to marshes, his voice to thunder, his motion to the wind, his sleep to the sun and moon, his bones to trees, his muscles to hills, his teeth to stones, his fat to dew, his hair to grass, while his breath returns to man."
Attributes of God.—There was a certain philosopher, named Ch'in Mi (died A.D. 226), whose services were much required by the King of Wu, who sent an envoy to fetch him. The envoy took upon himself to catechise the philosopher, with the following result:—