Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 3.djvu/68

dual form of worship described above—the worship of Shang-ti and the worship of spirits fulfilling his will—was supplemented by ancestor-worship, and the distinction came to be established that whereas homage to God on behalf of the whole people should be paid by the ruler of the State alone, homage to ancestors should be paid by each family or its head.

It will naturally be asked, on what evidence are these statements based; how can anything be confidently predicated about the religious belief of a people in ages long before means existed for accurately transmitting facts? The sources of evidence are two: first, ideographic and, secondly, historic. It has been shown, by processes of reasoning which cannot be set forth here in detail, that the earliest religious thoughts of the Chinese are reflected in the construction of their primitive written characters. In other words, by resolving into their component elements the ideographs for "heaven," "god," "spirit," and other cognate terms, the religious conceptions of the men that constructed these characters may be analysed.

The historic evidence is furnished by a remarkable series of works commonly called the Five Classics (Wu-ching). Of these the oldest is the Shu-king, or "book of records." It contains documents relating to Chinese history during a period of 1730 years, namely, from 2357 to 627 B. C.,—documents such as imperial ordinances, statesmen's suggestions for the guidance of sov-