course of the work, the laws of the physical world, of the heavens and the earth,
the mountains and rivers, of birds, fishes, quadrupeds, insects, plants, and trees,
are occasionally described. The great number of affairs which Mencius
managed, in the course of his life, in his intercourse with men, his occasional
conversations with people of rank, his instructions to his pupils, his expositions
of books, ancient and modern,—all these details are incorporated in this
publication. It is a collection of historical facts, and of the words of ancient ages,
put together for the instruction of mankind.
Mencius died when he was eighty-four years of age; his memory is revered by
the Chinese next to that of Confucius, and his descendants are treated with a
distinction inferior only to that which is accorded to those of Confucius.
King; or, The Five Canonical Works.These, which were either written or compiled by Confucius, are the most
venerable existing monuments of Chinese literature, and embody the
fundamental principles of the earliest creeds and customs of China.
The first is the Y-King, or “Sacred Book of Changes,” which may be termed a
Chinese Cyclopædia, and contains a great variety of subjects, morals, physics,
and metaphysics. It is founded on the combinations of sixty-four lines,—some
entire, and some broken,—and called Koua; the discovery of which has been
attributed to Fo-hi, the traditional founder of Chinese civilisation. He found
them, it is said, on the shell of a tortoise, and asserted that they were capable of
explaining all things. It does not seem easy, however, to explain them, and the
commentaries upon them are more numerous than even the commentaries upon
Shakespeare. The Imperial Library at Peking contains no fewer than 1450.
Second in order comes the Shu-King, or “Book of History,” which, despite its
imperfect and fragmentary condition, is full of interest. It contains a concise
narrative of Early Chinese history, down to the eighth century before our era;
including the speeches addressed by several emperors to their high officers, and
numerous valuable documents of great antiquity. Reference is made in its pages
to a great deluge, which some suppose to be the Flood recorded in the book of
Genesis, but others, with more probability, identify with one of the early and
extensive inundations of the Hoang-Ho.
The third is the Shi-King, or “Book of Sacred Songs,” a collection of 311 poems,