CHINESE ARCHITECTURE BOERSCHMANN. 56 Y 



This has an important bearing on the religious conception that 

 death produces life. The mountain is called the White Cloud for 

 the souls of the departed, thus emphasizing, " From life to death, out 

 of death life." Higher up the mountain there are imposing grave 

 inclosures amidst luxurious trees and plants. And when the Chinese 

 look down and contemplate the busy city of millions in Canton they 

 realize the vanity .of this world and the preciousness of the rest that 

 follows, death. All is vanity in the physical world. He is at once 

 a Chinese and a Buddhist. These ideas are further embodied in the 

 image of Shou-hsing, the wise ancient hoary god who displays the 

 symbol of the world, the sacred eight trigrams which explain the 

 circle of existence as the meaning of life (pi. 9, fig. 2). 



The Chinese thus feels himself to be closely connected with nature. 

 He knows that he originated from it (nature) and shall return to it, 

 and shall return to the earth, but then reappears in the persons of his 

 children and grandchildren. He feels himself to be but a guest on 

 earth, an insignificant part of the whole that he conceives as oneness. 

 This is the purest partheism, and a wellspring for the outspoken 

 social instinct of the race. 



There is, however, an essential difference between the Chinese and 

 the Hindu. The ideal of the Chinese is the greatness and wholeness 

 of creation, and he embodies this thought in his art and religion. 

 But as a practical man he realizes that as long as he is sojourning 

 upon this earth he should arrange this life as comfortably as pos- 

 sible. Hence his sober, businesslike sense, his perseverance in work 

 which should afford him the means for life and enjoyment. This 

 harmonizing of high idealism with practical sense gives the Chinese 

 people vitality and the right to have their ideas considered and 

 esteemed as on an equality with our purely individualistic culture. 

 And it may be due to the considerable admixture of individualism 

 in the Chinese pantheism that the Chinese in his disposition is nearer 

 to us than the racially more closely related, but dreamy and other- 

 worldly Hindu. 



We have observed how both the country and its history have 

 equally demonstrated to the Chinese the grandeur of their con- 

 ception of unity. His system of the universe is thus divided into 

 the forces in the circle of the two principles, the male and female; 

 in the eight trigrams symbolizing the development of the variety of 

 the rhythmic and harmonic physical world. Finally, the unity of 

 man and nature. It is not very different from our division of 

 natural philosophy in physics, mechanical energy, multiplicity, and 

 logic and biology. It is always apparently the same with mankind. 

 But the peculiar conception and combination of these elements with 

 its trend to pantheism gives Chinese culture a reality that is the best 

 conceivable preparation for artistic accomplishment. 



