CONTENT OF CHINESE EDUCATION 37 



becomes the main object, reading being wholly subordinate. Accord- 

 ing to Dr. Martin, the primary step in Chinese composition is yoking 

 double characters followed by practise in reduplicating such binary 

 compounds to form parallels, an idea which runs through the whole 

 of Chinese literature. Detailed symmetry is a chief characteristic of 

 Chinese composition as practised by old methods. Chiefly artificial 

 forms of verse and an even more artificial form of prose are acquired 

 and mark the climax of the whole course. The reading includes 

 rhetorical models and sundry anthologies. History is studied, but 

 only in compends, not to gain wisdom, but merely to embellish classic 

 essays with a profusion of historical allusions. Knowledge and mental 

 discipline are discounted and style is at a premium. In such a system 

 progressive knowledge is alien and education with such a goal is neces- 

 sarily superficial. 



The ' Five Classics ' follow the ' Four Books/ and we shall briefly 

 note their content. 



If not the oldest, certainly the most venerated member of this 

 Pentateuch is the I Ching, or ' Book of Changes,' whose diagrams date 

 back 2800 B.C., the text to 1150 B.C., and the Confucian commentary 

 thereon to 500 B.C. It ranks chief in the canon of Taoism and was 

 spared from the flames of the Tyrant of Ch'in to which all the other 

 writings of Confucius and his disciples were consigned in 213 B.C., 

 only to be rehabilitated from the living memories of devout literati. 

 The accredited author of the text, Weng Wang, was the virtual founder 

 of the great Chou dynasty (b.c. 1122-249) and the contemporary of 

 Pythagoras. It is a fanciful system of philosophy based on a set of 

 trigrams, each of which represents some power in nature whose com- 

 binations are developed in sixty-four short essays, enigmatically and 

 symbolically expressed, on moral, social and political themes, as well 

 as on the more lofty and subtile subject of the origin and destiny of 

 cosmos. The whole universe, in broad and in detail, is ascribed to the 

 interactions of two great male and female elements, the Yin and the 

 Yang, which in turn proceed from T'ai Chi, or the first great cause. 

 The text is followed by commentaries called the i Ten Wings,' generally 

 ascribed to Confucius, whose extravagant admiration of the I led 

 him to declare that were a hundred years added to his Hfe, he would 

 give fifty of them to the study of the I so that he might come to be 

 without faults. But the work appears to be little more than a lot 

 of enigmatical gibberish intended for the prognostication of good and 

 bad fortune. From it charlatans of all sorts have drawn their supplies. 

 The following is a specimen of the text and the accompanying wing 

 (Legge's translation) : 



