The Historians' History of the World 01

“Being asked: From the commencement of Heaven and Earth to the present time is not 10,000 years; I know not how it was before that time? He replied, Before that there was another clear opening (i.e. another Heaven and Earth) like the present one. Being further asked whether Heaven and Earth can perish altogether, he replied, They cannot: but, when mankind totally degenerate, then the whole shall return to Chaos, and Men and things shall all cease to exist; and then the World shall begin again. Some one asked how the first Man was generated; and he replied by the transmutation of the Air; the subtle portions of the Light and Darkness and the Five Elements united and produced his form. The Buddhists call this transmuting and generating. At present things are transmuted and generated in abundance like lice.

“Before Chaos was divided the Light-Dark Air was mixed up and dark, and when it divided, the centre formed an enormous and most brilliant opening, and the two E were established. Shaou Kang-tsee considers 129,600 years to be a Yuen (Kalpa); then, before this period of 129,600 years there was another opening and spreading out of the World; and before that again, there was another like the present; so that, Motion and Rest, Light and Darkness, have no beginning. As little things shadow forth great things, this may be illustrated by the revolutions of Day and Night. What Woo-Fung says about the Great Cessation of the entire Air, the vast and boundless agitation of all things, the whole expanse of waters changing position, the mountains bursting asunder, the channels being obliterated, Men and things all coming to an end, and the ancient vestiges all destroyed—all this refers to the utter destruction of the world by Deluge. We frequently see, on lofty mountains, the shells of the sea-snail and pearl-oyster, as it were generated in the middle of stones; these stones were (part of) the soil of the former world. The sea-snail and pearl-oyster belong to the water; so that that which was below changed and became high; that which was soft changed and became hard. This is a deep subject, and should be investigated.

“Being asked whether the multitude of things existed before Heaven and Earth divided, he replied: There was merely the idea of each thing. Heaven and Earth generate all things, and throughout all time, ancient and modern, cannot be separated from all things.”

It should be remarked as illustrating the difficulties of translating the thought of one language into the words of another, that Mr. F. H. Balfour questions certain of Canon M’Clatchie’s renderings. Thus a sentence which M’Clatchie interprets, “In the entire universe where there is no fate there is no air, and where there is no air there is no fate,” Mr. Balfour would read instead of “fate” “mind,” and instead of “air” “matter,” the sentence becoming, “In the entire universe where there is no mind there is no matter, and where there is no matter there is no mind.” Such divergent renderings as this are to be expected in the case of any Oriental language. It will not be forgotten how George Smith, one of the first great interpreters of the Assyrian tablets, read the Hebrew story of the Garden of Eden in the vague phrasing of the cuneiform document, where, as Menant quickly demonstrated, the writer of the document had composed a quite different story. This “reading into Homer that which Homer never knew” is much too familiar a subject to require further elucidation; but it is peculiarly desirable to bear it in mind in dealing with the philosophical and religious notions of any alien people.

Turning from the Orient, it is of interest to interrogate the Greek writers as to the creation schemes that were current in classical times. In the histories of Greece and Rome, we shall have occasion to examine these somewhat more in detail. For the present purpose, perhaps, an excerpt from Diodorus, who wrote with a full knowledge both of Greek and Roman ideas at about the beginning of our era, will be sufficiently illuminative.