18 Introduction. 



consulted and utilized only after a most painful scrutiny of the subject 

 in question, and in almost all cases, they will then be found worthless 

 because fanciful. The sinologue is confronted with this problem, — 

 is the Chinese language really that clear and logical structure such 

 as has been given out by a certain school of philologists, if the Chinese 

 themselves, and even their best' scholars of the remote Han period, 

 were liable to misunderstand their ancient classical texts step for 

 step? And what is the cause for these misunderstandings? To one 

 initiated into the ethnological mode of thinking, it is not far to seek. 

 Indeed, it would be unjust to brand the Chinese with special reproach 

 in this matter, and to expose their working-methods to unfair reflec- 

 tions. 



What developed in China along this line, is a subconscious factor 

 which has dominated the cultural life of all peoples of the globe from 

 the dim beginnings of mankind until the present day. It is the pre- 

 vailing tendency of the human mind to account for the reason of 

 existing customs and traditions, and to seek, with the advance of 

 individual conscious reasoning, for rational explanations of phenomena 

 purely emotional and ethnical at the outset. This method results 

 in a new association of ideas which has nothing in common with the 

 origin of the notion in question, and may be the outcome of pure, 

 speculation. In China, where the bent to systematizing speculation 

 was always strong in the minds of individual thinkers, the effects of 

 this mental process come more intensely to the surface than in smaller 

 communities more strongly tied by a uniformity of tribal thoughts, 

 and for this reason, the Chinese offer the best imaginable material for 

 a study of the psychological foundations of ethnical phenomena. 



The errors in the interpretation of ancient customs and notions 

 committed by Chinese commentators and editors, their failures in 

 their attempts at a reconstruction of the past, and their positive pro- 

 ductions of newly formed ancient artistic designs, never existing in 

 times of antiquity, are not logical blunders to be imputed to their 

 intellectual frame, but emanations of their psychical constitution 

 evolved from a new process of association. The problem moves on 

 purely psychological, not on mental lines. To revert to our above 

 example, — the trend of thought in the Chou time was symbolic, 

 swayed by impressions and sentiments received from celestial and 

 cosmical aspects of the universe, and strove for expression in geo- 

 metrical representations, so much so that the singular art of the Chou 

 cannot be better characterized than by the two words symbolic and 

 geometric, or, as geometric symbolism. Round raised dots or knobs 

 were suggestive, on mere emotional grounds, of a heap of grain-seeds. 



