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BOOK IV.

THE GREAT PLAN.

147

good fortune in being still, and active operations will be unlucky.'*

viii. 'Eighth, of the various verifications^[1].—They are rain, sunshine, heat, cold, wind, and seasonableness. When the five come, all complete, and each in its proper order, (even) the various plants will be richly luxuriant. Should any one of them be either excessively abundant or excessively deficient, there will be evil.*

'There are the favourable verifications^[2]:—namely,

↑ P. Gaubil renders by 'les apparences' the characters which I have translated 'the various verifications,' observing that he could not find any word which would cover the whole extent of the meaning. He says, 'In the present case, the character signifies meteors, phenomena, appearances, but in such sort that these have relation to some other things with which they are connected;—the meteor or phenomenon indicates some good or some evil. It is a kind of correspondency which is supposed, it appears, to exist between the ordinary events of the life of men and the constitution of the air, according to the different seasons;—what is here said supposes—I know not what physical speculation of those times. It is needless to bring to bear on the text the interpretation of the later Chinese, for they are full of false ideas on the subject of physics. It may be also that the count of Khî wanted to play the physicist on points which he did not know.' There seems to underlie the words of the count that feeling of the harmony between the natural and spiritual worlds, which occurs at times to most men, and strongly affects minds under deep religious thought or on the wings of poetic rapture, but the way in which he endeavours to give the subject a practical application can only be characterised as grotesque.
↑ Compare with this what is said above on the second division of the Plan, 'the five (personal) matters.' It is observed here by Zhâi Khăn, the disciple of Kû Hsî, and whose commentary on the Shû has, of all others, the greatest authority:—'To say that on occasion of such and such a personal matter being realized, there will be the favourable verification corresponding to it, or that, on occasion of the failure of such realization, there will be the corresponding

L 2

[1] P. Gaubil renders by 'les apparences' the characters which I have translated 'the various verifications,' observing that he could not find any word which would cover the whole extent of the meaning. He says, 'In the present case, the character signifies meteors, phenomena, appearances, but in such sort that these have relation to some other things with which they are connected;—the meteor or phenomenon indicates some good or some evil. It is a kind of correspondency which is supposed, it appears, to exist between the ordinary events of the life of men and the constitution of the air, according to the different seasons;—what is here said supposes—I know not what physical speculation of those times. It is needless to bring to bear on the text the interpretation of the later Chinese, for they are full of false ideas on the subject of physics. It may be also that the count of Khî wanted to play the physicist on points which he did not know.' There seems to underlie the words of the count that feeling of the harmony between the natural and spiritual worlds, which occurs at times to most men, and strongly affects minds under deep religious thought or on the wings of poetic rapture, but the way in which he endeavours to give the subject a practical application can only be characterised as grotesque.

[p147_2-2] Compare with this what is said above on the second division of the Plan, 'the five (personal) matters.' It is observed here by Zhâi Khăn, the disciple of Kû Hsî, and whose commentary on the Shû has, of all others, the greatest authority:—'To say that on occasion of such and such a personal matter being realized, there will be the favourable verification corresponding to it, or that, on occasion of the failure of such realization, there will be the corresponding

[1]

[2]