Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 3.djvu/77

called yin. Graphically represented, the yang became a whole line (——), the yin a divided line (— —). Everything strong and active in the universe belonged to the yang category, everything weak and passive to the yin, and thus was obtained a series of antimonies—heaven and earth, sun and moon, light and darkness, male and female, etc.,—which in the aggregate made up the totality of being. This conception—to which the positive and negative currents of electricity suggest an obvious analogy—did not originate with Wan. It is attributed to a sovereign, Fu-hsi (3322 B. C.), founder of the Chinese nation, who took these Liang-i (two principles) and formed with them, first, four digrams (⚌ ⚍ ⚎ ⚏) and, next, eight trigrams (☰ ☱ ☲, etc.), the celebrated Pah-kwa, which enter so largely into all the decorative art of China. Each trigram in Fu-hsi's Pah-kwa represented, not only a natural object, as heaven, earth, water, fire, etc., but also an attribute, as strength, pleasure, brightness, etc., and a point of the compass. Wan extended this conception by forming sixty-four hexagrams, to which he appended as many short essays on important themes, mostly of a moral, social, and political character. The nomenclature of Wan's hexagrams, the attributes he assigned to them, and the compass points he attached to them, differed radically from the system of Fu-hsi. But that is a detail of minor importance. King Wan's son, Tan, whom his-