"By him the sure events of Lots are given;
By him the prophet speaks the will of Heaven."Tytler.
The Romans had also their lots to determine future events, which were a kind of wooden dice, and their priests examined the marks and interpreted the signification of the throw. And the ancient Germans, according to Tacitus, made use of little sticks, notched at the ends which, like the Chinese, they threw three times in case they did not approve of the first throw. Herodotus traces the custom of predicting future events to the ancient Egyptians, and seems to think the Greeks had it from them. But is not the desire of prying into futurity to be ascribed rather to a weakness in human nature, than as a custom borrowed by one nation from another? Are we entirely free from it in modern Europe? However humiliating the reflection may be, yet it is certainly true, that men of the strongest minds and soundest judgments have sometimes, towards the close of an useful life, devoted their time to the exposition of old prophecies without meaning, or applicable only to events that were already in train to be accomplished when the prediction was made. Among many others, the great Napier, the inventor of logarithms, might be produced as an instance of this remark. From the Apocalypse of Saint John he predicted the day of judgment; but his calculations in this instance not being founded on data equally solid with those on which he constructed his tables, he unfortunately survived the day he had named to blush at his own weakness.
Other parts of the doctrine of Confucius were well calculated to keep alive the superstitious notions that still prevail among the multitude. He taught them to believe that the human body was composed of two principles, the one light, invisible, and ascending; the other gross, palpable, and descending; that the separation of these two principles cause the death of man; that at this awful period the light and spiritual part of the human body ascends into the air, whilst the gross and corporeal matter sinks into the earth. The word death, in fact, never enters into the philosophy of Confucius; nor, indeed, on common occasions is it employed by the Chinese at the present day. When a person departs this life, the common expression is, he has returned to his family. And although the body resolves itself in the course of time into its primitive elements, and becomes a part of the universe; yet, he contended, the spirits of such as had performed their duty in life were permitted to visit their ancient habitations, or such places as might be appointed for receiving the homage of their descendants, on whom they had the power of conferring benefactions. On this ground it became the indispensable duty of every good man to observe a strict obedience of the performance of sacred rites in the temple consecrated to the memory of ancestors. He maintained that all such as neglected this great branch of moral duty would be punished for their neglect, after death, by their spiritual part being deprived of the privilege of visiting the hall of ancestors; and, consequently, of the pleasure arising from the homage bestowed by their descendants. Such a system could not fail to establish a belief in good and evil genii, and of tutelar spirits presiding over families, towns, cities, houses, mountains, and other particular places. It afterwards required no great stretch of the imagination to give to these "airy nothings a local habitation and a name."
It does not appear, however, that either Confucius or any of his disciples attached the least idea of a personal being to the deity; nor does it seem ever to have entered into their minds to represent the great first cause under any image or personification. They considered the sun, moon, stars and the elements, with the azure firmament, as the creative and productive powers, the immediate agents of the Deity and inseparably connected with him, and they offered adoration to these agents, united in one word tien (Heaven). It cannot be supposed, after what has already been observed in the sixth chapter, that I should lay any stress on the similarity of words in different languages, or on the analogy of their signification, in order to prove a common origin; but if the conjecture of the learned Bos be right, that Θεος may be derived from Θεειν to move forward, in allusion to the motion of the heavenly bodies which the ancient Greeks, as well as the Persians, worshipped, tien certainly comes very near the Greek both in sound and signification; nearer it could not come in sound, as the Chinese by no effort could pronounce the Θ th. The word tien not only signifies heaven, but a revolution of the heavenly bodies, and is in common use both in writing and conversation for day, as ye, ul, san tien, one, two, three days.
The Confucionists, like the Stoics, seem to have considered the whole universe as one animated system, made up of one material substance and one spirit, of which every living thing was an emanation, and to which, when separated by death from the material part it had animated, every living thing again returned. In a word, their conceptions of the Deity might be summed up in those two beautiful and expressive lines of Pope,
"All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body nature is, and God the soul."
But that which is most surprizing is, that the enthusiastic followers of Confucius have never erected any statue to his memory, nor paid him divine honours as erroneously has been supposed. In every city is a public building, a kind of college, wherein examinations are held for degrees of office, and this building is called the house of Confucius. Here, on certain appointed days, the men of letters assemble to pay respect to the memory of their esteemed philosopher. In the great hall appropriated for this ceremony a plain tablet is erected, on which is painted an inscription, in gilt characters, to this effect: "O Cong-foo-tse, our revered master, let thy spiritual part descend and be pleased with this our respect which we now humbly offer to thee!" Fruit and wine, flowers, perfumes and other articles are then placed before the tablet, during which are also burning various kinds of scented gums, frankincense, tapers of sandal wood and gilt paper. This ceremony, which in every respect is the same to that which he taught as an observance towards the manes of departed relations, they are persuaded is agreeable to the invisible spirits of those to whom it is offered, who delight in hovering over the grateful odour of flowers, of fruit, and the smoke of incense. Thus, in like manner, did the Romans on their birth-days offer flowers and fruit and wine, and burn incense to invisible spirits, whom they called the genii,
"Funde merum genio."
"Fill a glass to Genius."
But the priests, who, in all ages and in most nations, have been crafty enough to turn to their own account the credulity and superstitions of the people, having once established as a religious duty the offering of sweet-smelling herbs and other perfumes, found little difficulty in persuading the multitude, that that the tutelar spirits could eat as well as smell, and that sacrifices and meat-offerings would be acceptable to the gods. The priests of China lost no time in introducing sacrifices, even of living creatures, and offerings of corn and rice and wine and precious metals upon their altars, not however to that extent which was practised in the temples of Greece and Rome, whose gods were the most mercenary of all nations, being rarely induced to grant a favour without a fee. Nor in modern days have the monks and priests of the Catholic faith been backward in this respect particularly in sanctioning the doctrine of composition for sins, for the absolution of which the rate was not even fixed in proportion to the magnitude; and what is still more astonishing, this impious practice of bargaining with the Almighty has survived the dark ages, and exists to a certain degree at this moment.
The moral and religious opinions of Confucius were, in fact, too sublime and too metaphysical to preserve their purity among a people so unprepared, as his countrymen were, to receive and cherish them. The attention of the multitude would seem, indeed, in all nations to require being fixed on something gross and material. How difficult was it for the priest and the leader of the Jews, to restrain their people from practices of idolatry. In the short absence even of Moses on Mount Sinai, they made for themselves a molten calf of gold as an object of divine worship, in imitation, probably, of what they had beheld in the temples of Egypt. The invisible god made little impression on their gross and untutored understandings. Nor was Numa more successful than Moses or Confucius, in his attempt to establish among the people the worship of an ideal or mental object of adoration. Thus also it happened with the Chinese. The sublime conceptions of their great philosopher, too refined indeed for untutored human nature, they could not comprehend. They required some visible object on which they might fix their attention. It was not enough merely to imagine that the spirits of men, who had done their duty in this life, were permitted to haunt the places where their bodies were interred, or where their surviving friends should assemble to do them honour: it was necessary to give them a form and substance. In the same manner was the purity of the Christian religion contaminated by the multitude of images that were invented in the monkish ages, when every city, town, and church, and even individuals, provided they could pay for them, had their particular patron, or tutelar saint.