"It is difficult for a ghost to become a man, because it has fallen to ghosthood, and because it has lost manhood.
"A man is a ghost; a ghost is a man: but all men are not ghosts, neither is every ghost a man.
"Those who can be respectful without feeling ashamed, who can be submissive without deception, who can obey to perfection the rule of life, and are able to preserve their natural force unabated, secretly cherishing growth, will become Buddhas or Genii, and not ghosts."
PAVILION OF THE MOON IN GROUNDS OF GOD OF WAR'S TEMPLE.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.
Probably a great deal is lost in this translation; but the phrase to be "submissive without deception" is certainly noteworthy.
The god of war has not passed through so many vicissitudes; but it seems that in his lifetime he was a merchant noted for probity and liberality, and it is in this character that his picture is to be found in all self-respecting business firms to this day as an example of what a merchant should be. Then as the centuries passed by, he was canonised as the god or guardian saint of war, and his last change was being made the tutelary deity of the present dynasty. It is a great question, however, whether the Chinese can properly be said to have either gods or idols, or whether it would not be more correct to say they make and set up images of men canonised as guardian saints, and whose spirits are supposed to be present where proper reverence is shown to their images. According to Dr. Edkins, at the feasts in honour of the dead, whether simply ancestors or famous men of old, the dead man is now represented by a tablet; but by ancient rules a living representative was required, and preferably a grandson. In the time of the Hia Dynasty he stood. Under the Shang Dynasty—from 1800 to 1200 B.C.—he sat. Under the Chow Dynasty there would be six representatives of the deceased ancestors, who were all treated as guests, and partook of the feast. They had the strange idea that only thus could the patriarch of the clan be kept from extinction; for they thought of the soul as breath, liable to be dispersed as air. They called such a representative of the dead "the corpse," or, more correctly, "the image of the soul." It is hard to say whether such a practice is more material or spiritual.
Mencius describes images as at first made of grass and rushes, and then of wood, "to be buried with the dead in order to provide the deceased with servants to wait upon him in the other world." But not in his writings, nor in any of the classics, are there any indications of worshipping images or idolatry. Probably these images were a survival of human sacrifices in more ancient times. Paper representations of houses, servants, horses, money, are now burnt at stated festivals, in order to supply the dead with all they need. And for about a month before the appointed day, all through China, the eldest grandson of each family may be seen busy making out lists of all the ancestors entitled to such gifts, and writing letters to be burnt with them. Then on the appointed day the feast is spread, chopsticks are placed, wine-cups are filled, all for the dead dear ones. Thus are the superstitions or religious observances of the Chinese knit with their every-day life; for the living in the end eat the feast, though the wine is commonly poured out upon the ground as a libation. Then comes the great day when all the family goes out as a great picnic party to the family graves. The best clothes are put on, and a long day is spent in the country in junketing and gossip. All the environs of a Chinese city—for the environs are always the graveyards—are alive with gaily dressed parties of people, till the appearance presented is that of a great fair; for naturally booths are erected for the sale of eatables and drinkables as well as of offerings all along by the wayside. The temples are crowded; the priests receive offerings. Every one goes home at night with much the same expression as English people after a Bank Holiday. On the whole, the Chinese festival appears the holier and more fraught with sentiment of the two. Naturally, this festival is the culminating-point of ancestral worship. But it does not seem difficult to see how reverence for ancestors might be made altogether Christian, the natural outcome of the fourth commandment; nor how these feasts for the dead might be made very much the same as the Jour des Morts in Paris, or, indeed, something higher and yet more Christian. They are inextricably knit with the belief that the dead father's spirit floats round and watches over his children after death; and thus is the principle of noblesse oblige, or respect for ancestors, carried into every, even the poorest, household of China.