itality. Therefore, argues Wang Ch'ung, when the
body perishes and the fluid loses its vitality, each being dependent
on the other, there remains nothing for immortality in a life beyond
the grave. Ghosts he held to be the hallucinations of disordered
minds, and miracles to be natural phenomena capable of simple
explanations. His indictments of Confucius and Mencius are not of a
serious character; though, as regards the former, it must be borne in
mind that the Chinese people will not suffer the faintest aspersion on
the fair fame of their great Sage. It is related in the _Lun Yue_ that
Confucius paid a visit to the notoriously immoral wife of one of the
feudal nobles, and that a certain disciple was "displeased" in
consequence, whereupon the Master swore, saying, "If I have done any
wrong, may the sky fall and crush me!" Wang Ch'ung points out that the
form of oath adopted by Confucius is unsatisfactory and fails to carry
conviction. Had he said, "May I be struck dead by lightning!" his
sincerity would have been more powerfully attested, because people are
often struck dead by lightning; whereas the fall of the sky is too
remote a contingency, such a thing never having been known to happen
within the memory of man. As to Mencius, there is a passage in his
works which states that a thread of predestination runs through all
human life, and that those who accommodate themselves will come off
better in the end than those who try to oppose; it is in fact a
statement of the [Greek: ouk uper moron] principle. On this Wang
Ch'ung remarks that the will of God is consequently made to depend on
human actions; and he further strengthens his objection by showing
that the best men have often fared worst. For instance, Confucius
never became emperor; Pi Kan, the patriot, was disembowelled; the bold
and faithful disciple, Tz[)u] Lu, was chopped into small pieces.

Book of Changes.

But the tale of Chinese philosophers is a long one. It is a department
of literature in which the leading scholars of all ages have mostly
had something to say. The great Chu Hsi, A.D. 1130-1200, whose fame is
chiefly perhaps that of a commentator and whose monument is his
uniform exegesis of the Confucian Canon, was also a voluminous writer
on philosophy. He took a hand in the mystery which surrounds the _I
Ching_ (or _Yih King_), generally known as the Book of Changes, which
is h