Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1885-01-17
QUEER NOTIONS.
What the Chinese Believe Concerning
mmortality.

4 writer in a recent issue of the North
China Herald discusses the early Chinese
notions OF Immortality. In the most an
cient times ancestral worship was main
tanned on the ground that the souls of the
dead exist after this life. The present is
part only of human existence, and men
continue to be after death what they have
become before it. Hence the honors ac-
corded to men of rank in their lifetime
were continued to them after their death.
In the earliest utterances of Chinese Ma
tional thought on this subject we find that
duality which has remained the prominent
feature in Chinese thinking ever since.
The present life is light; the future is
darkness. What the shadow is to the sub
stance, the soul is to the body; what yapor
is to water breath is to man. By the pro-
cess of cooling steam may again become
water and the transformation of animals
teach us that beings Inferior to man may
live after death. Ancient Chinese, then,
believed that as there is male and female
principle in all nature, q tay and a night
as inseparable from each thing in the uni
verse as from the universe itself, SO it is
with man. In the course of ages, and in the
vicissitudes of religious ideas, men came
to believe more definitely in the POSSIBLE
itv of communications with supernatural
beings. In the twelfth century before the
Christian era it was a distinct belief that
the thoughts of the sages were to them
a revelation from above. The Book of
Odes" frequently uses the expression,
God spoke to Them" and one sage is rep
resented after death moving up and
down in the presence of God in heaven
A few centuries subsequently we find for
the first time great men transferred in the
popular imagination to the sky, it being
believed that their souls took up their
abodes in certain consultations. This was
due to the fact that the ideas of immortal
ity had taken new shape, and that the
philosophy Of the times regarded the stars
Of heaven as the pure essences of the
grosser things belonging to this world.
The pure is heavenly and the gross earth
ly, and therefore that which is purest on
earth ascends to the region Of the stars.
At the same time hermitS and other ascot
les began to be credited with the power of
acquiring extraordinary longevity, and
the storb became the animal which the
immortals preferred to ride above all
others. The idea of plants which CON
fer immunity from death soon sprang
up. The fungus known as Polyporus luci-
dus was taken to be the most etiicaci0us of
all plants in guarding man from death, and
1900 ounces Of silver have been asked for
a single specimen. Its red color was among
the circumstances which gave it It's reputa-
ton, for at this time the five colors of
Babylonian astrology had been accepted as
indications of good and evil fortune This
connection Of red color with the notion
Of Immortality through the medium Of
good and bad luck led to the adoption OF
cinnabar as the philosophers stone, and
thus to the construction Of the whole sys-
tenn Of alchemy. The plant OF immortal
life IS spoken of in ancient Chinese litera-
ture at least 4 century before the mineral.
In correspondence with the tree Of life in
Eden there was probably Babylonian ira
dition which found its way to China
shortly before Chinese writers mention the
plant Of immortality The Chinese, not
being navigators, must have got their ideas
of the ocean which surrounds the world
from those who were, and when they re-
ceived a cosmography they would receive
it with It's legends Nature.