12G THE TIIEISTIC IMPORT OF THE SUNG PHILOSOPHY 



by Heaven?" To which the Philosopher replied, "They 

 simply flow from the Great Source. The phenomena may 

 be such as would lead one to think that there is not really 

 One imparting the decree ; but that there is a personal being 

 ( A ) above us by whose command these things come to pass, 

 seems to be taught by the Odes and Eecords — in such pass- 

 ages, for example, as speak of the wrath of the Supreme 

 Euler. But still this Euler is none other than Law. In the 

 whole Universe there is nothing higher than Law, and hence 

 it is termed Euler. In the passage in which it is said : , 

 'The great God has conferred on the inferior people a moral 

 sense,' the very word 'confer' conveys the idea of One who 

 exercises authority." And that all this refers to the Em- 

 pyrean is shown by the further question of the same ques- 

 tioner who, still unsatisfied, asked with respect to various 

 natural phenomena: "Is it that in all these the Empyrean 

 truly possesses the power which controls the creative and 

 transforming processes, or is it that the Supreme Ultimate 

 is the Pivot on which all transformations turn, and therefore 

 that the universe is what it is by a process of self-evolution?" 

 Chu Hsi, however, never gave what he considered un- 

 necessary explanations, and in this case his reply was 

 simply: "This is the same question as the one already 

 answered.""* 



It would hardly be possible for personality to be affirmed 

 of the Supreme Euler in terms more explicit than in the 

 last of these passages. The universe is what it is, not by a 

 process of self -evolution, not by a fortuitous conjunction, 

 intricate and complex, of the two ethers; but all things flow 

 from the Great Source, their inequalities come to pass by the 

 command of a personal Supreme Euler; and this Euler has 

 conferred on men a moral sense which renders them res- 

 ponsible to Himself for the rightness or otherwise of all their 

 actions. It is obvious, therefore, that in the criticism by 

 Chu Hsi quoted above he does not mean to deny the per- 

 sonality of the Supreme Being. It will be noted that the 

 word translated "personal being" in all these passages is 

 literally 'man' ( A ). The word does not of course, in itself 

 necessarily carry with it an anthropomorphic meaning, 

 except that the only instance of personality directly known 

 to man is man. Nevertheless, it would seem that what 

 Chu Hsi complained of in his contemporaries was in the case 

 of some the extreme of anthropomorphism, and in others 

 the opposite error of denying altogether the existence of a 

 Supreme Euler and the passage in question was designed to 



* %. j. $. m , Bk. XLIII, ff . 34-35. 



