34 DESTINY, FATE 



is to say, that they were appointed to terminate their lives 

 just at the same time. It would be absurd to think the 

 young and old, rich and poor, fortunate and unfortunate were 

 doomed to this. Similarly in the case of the entombed 

 prisoners, and the millions who have died from plague and 

 pestilence. 



We ourselves, perhaps, have had such a suggestion thrown 

 out to us by the tragedy of the great war, or such catastro- 

 phies as overtook St. Martinique and Messina when these 

 unhappy districts were wrecked by earthquakes. 



To this argument the Confucianist replied that it isn't 

 at all unreasonable in face of the immensity of the world to 

 think that vast concourses of people die under one destiny. 

 In view of the vastness of the world a concourse of 40,000 

 or a whole population of a city is really nothing at all. So 

 far from there being absurdity in the supposition it was 

 ■actually because of a common destiny that these people were 

 •congregated in one place and either drowned or buried. It 

 was predetermined that officials and people should be there. 



The Confucian critic, however, does see a difficulty in 

 dealing with the theory of destiny. He realizes that it is 

 somewhat unreasonable to maintain that there were not 

 many people in, say, Li Yang who< were not destined to 

 longevity. In the flux of the world and life it stands to 

 reason that the course of nature could not run the same 

 length in the case of everyone. 



What then may be the explanation. There is a very 

 important modification. The somewhat unique theory is 

 advanced, a theory that has been favourably received by 

 many. "Thus," Wang Ch'ung says, "we reach a principle 

 that the destiny of a nation is stronger than the destiny of 

 the individual : the destiny of longevity is stronger than that 

 of a man's fortune, i.e. a man may lose honour and fortune 

 and yet survive. So in modification of the predestination 

 theory it must be remembered that an individual's destiny 

 may depend on the destiny of a community. Thus destruc- 

 tive times, revolutions, disease, pestilence, prevent the fulfil- 

 ment of an individual's destiny. The kingdom of Sung, Wei, 

 Cheng, Ching, once upon a time, were visited by a destruc- 

 tive pestilence contemporaneously. Many there must have 

 been who were destined to a long life, but they shared and 

 suffered in the communal danger, which nullified the in- 

 dividual's destiny. 



Destiny and Fate therefore, it may be reasonably argued, 

 govern the rise and fall of nations. And this destiny is linked 

 to the stars. The propitious or unpropitious location of the 

 stars determine the fate of nations. The stars again result 



