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The ordinary mind would seem to have been either indifferent to or satisfied with the abstruse cosmogonical and cosmological theories of the early sages for at least a thousand years. P'an Ku and his myth must be regarded rather as an accident than as a creation resulting from any sudden flow of psychological forces or wind of discontent ruffling the placid Chinese mind.
Within the pale of the Anglican establishment, I venture to doubt, whether, at this moment, there are as many thorough-going defenders of "plenary inspiration" as there were timid questioners of that doctrine, half a century ago. Commentaries, sanctioned by the highest authority, give up the "actual historical truth" of the cosmogonical and diluvial narratives.
This tells of the World, its beginning, its convulsions and its ending, and thus embraces the three minor cycles of the cosmogonical, the cataclysmal and the eschatological myths. Nature is known to man only as force, which manifests itself in change. He is so constituted that “the idea of an event, a change, without the idea of a cause, is impossible” to him.
An important conclusion has been drawn from these experiments which affects cosmogonical theories: since the cold of space could not kill the germs of life, it is in no way absurd to suppose that, under proper conditions, a germ may be transmitted from one planet to another.
Therefore nearly all cosmogonical myths are but variations of that one familiar to us all: “And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together in one place, and let the dry land appear; and it was so.” The manifestation of the primordial energy was supposed to have been akin to that which is shown in organic reproduction.
Their cosmogonical connexion has already been referred to in a previous chapter. Image of K'uei Hsing In front of Wên Ch'ang, on his left, stands K'uei Hsing.
Let us ask the astronomers who originate cosmogonical hypotheses, and invent a primitive nebula, the natural philosophers who dream that by the deterioration of energy and the dissipation of movement the material world will obtain final rest in the inertia of a homogeneous equilibrium, let us ask the biologists and psychologists who are enemies of fixed species and inquisitive about ancestral history.
The rainbow was believed by the vulgar to be an emanation from an enormous oyster away in the great ocean which surrounded the world, i.e. China. Philosophers held it to be the result of undue proportions in the mixture of the two cosmogonical principles which when properly blended produce the harmony of nature.
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.
He is said to have been a teacher of Pythagoras, which shows that he belongs to an uncertain period. He was not a Philosopher; his speculations belonged to those cosmogonical dreams which precede true philosophy, and begin again when philosophy goes to sleep, as we see in the speculations of the present day. Kallisthenes is mentioned in Plutarch's Life of Alexander, c. 55.
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