An ancient said, "I have been of no benefit to mankind while living. Let me not injure them when I am dead. Choose my burying place where the earth yields no food for man." Others have said, "If a man dies on the hills, let him be buried on the hills. If he dies in the lowlands, let him be buried in the lowlands." This was said with a view to economy. It would be a useless expense to convey the body to a distance. For the same reason another noted person of the Han period ordered his son to bury him without a coffin in a grave dug in the ground. In the T'ang dynasty a high officer gave directions that he should be buried in a plain manner, without monument or stone of any kind, and over his grave the villagers were to be allowed to plough and sow as of old.

Such dying instructions as these have been carefully preserved by the Chinese literati, who felt that they were more in accordance with true wisdom than the follies which afterwards grew into vogue. They show the proper standpoint of the genuine Confucianist. With him everything must give way to moral considerations.

In arguing against feng-shui and the other superstitions

of the Chinese, we ought to find on this ground a fast friend in the true follower of Confucius. The freedom of Confucius from superstition is one of the best proofs of the greatness of his mind, and a main cause of his ascendancy over the literary class. His utterances on the danger of excessive reverence to the kwei-shen have been a barrier against Buddhism, and prevented the extension of its soporific influence over the whole nation. The literati have thus been kept in an independent and self-sustained position, and have not become quite overwhelmed by this intrusive foreign element. Hence, the scions of scholarly families and students who have read extensively are trained in a school of ideas antagonistic to superstition. These men, therefore, may be appealed to in aid of our opposition to the feng-shui. They are ashamed of it. They disown it if brought in argument to close quarters. They only comply with it from an unwillingness to act contrary to custom. The great minds among them avoid even the appearance of compliance, but these are not many.

Considering that the enlightened Chinese are thus disposed, there could be no harm done by a studied attack on the whole system of geomancy in a book prepared for the purpose. It would not be offensive to the true Confucianist, and it would afford opportunity to teach much good philosophy and truer views of nature than those to which they have been accustomed. But perhaps the whole structure is so flimsy that it will fall of itself, without laying siege to it or directing the ordnance of argument against it. The shining of true science may pale its ineffectual fire, and cause it to disappear as a thing of darkness, without special effort to bring about its extinction.

Footnotes