for the belief in
the second self or ghost or double of the dead is in reality nothing
else. And we find it operating with apparently undiminished energy
after the Chinese mind had reached its maturity in the Sung dynasty.

The Canon of Changes

The Bible of Chinese dualism is the _I ching_, the _Canon of Changes_
(or _Permutations_). It is held in great veneration both on account
of its antiquity and also because of the "unfathomable wisdom which
is supposed to lie concealed under its mysterious symbols." It is
placed first in the list of the classics, or Sacred Books, though
it is not the oldest of them. When exactly the work itself on which
the subsequent elaborations were founded was composed is not now
known. Its origin is attributed to the legendary emperor Fu Hsi
(2953-2838 B.C.). It does not furnish a cosmogony proper, but merely
a dualistic system as an explanation, or attempted explanation,
or even perhaps orly a record, of the constant changes (in modern
philosophical language the "redistribution of matter and motion")
going on everywhere. That explanation or record was used for purposes
of divination. This dualistic system, by a simple addition, became
a monism, and at the same time furnished the Chinese with a cosmogony.

The Five Elements

The Five Elements or Forces (_wu hsing_)--which, according to
the Chinese, are metal, air, fire, water, and wood--are first
mentioned in Chinese literature in a chapter of the classic _Book
of History_. [8] They play a very important part in Chinese thought:
'elements' meaning generally not so much the actual substances as the
forces essential to human, life. They have to be noticed in passing,
because they were involved in the development of the cosmogonical
ideas which took place in the eleventh and twelfth centuries A.D.

Monism

As their imagination grew, it was natural that the Chinese should
begin to ask themselves what, if the _yang_ and the _yin_ by
their permutations produced, or gave shape to, all things, was it
that produced the _yang_ and the _yin_. When we see traces of this
inquisitive tendency we find ourselves on the borderland of dualism
where the transition is taking place into the realm of monism. But
though there may have been a tendency toward monism in early times, it
was only in the Sung dynasty that the philosophers definitely placed
behind the _yang_ and the _yin_ a First Cause--the Grand Origin,
Grand Extreme, Grand Terminus, o