Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 3.djvu/84

What has thus far been written shows the conception entertained by old-time Chinese as to the nature of God and of the spirits, ministers of his will. The question now arises, what idea prevailed with regard to man. A very plain answer is furnished in the Book of Records by the great Tang, founder of the Chang dynasty (1766-1122 b. c.). Speaking two hundred years before the birth of Moses, this sage ruler said: "The great God has conferred even on the inferior people a moral sense compliance with which would show their nature invariably right. To make them tranquilly pursue the course which it would indicate is the work of the sovereign." There are many evidences of the interpretation put upon this doctrine in later times, and they all indicate a belief that "God made men and endowed them with a good nature intended to lead them invariably right;" but that, at the same time, he endowed them with desires calculated to betray them into error unless some controlling force were at hand. That force was supplied by sovereigns and sages. Mencius and Confucius expounded this doctrine in the most unequivocal terms. Confucius said "man is born for uprightness," and Mencius wrote, "From the feelings proper to it we see that our nature is constituted for the practice of what is good. If men do what is not good, the blame cannot be imputed to their natural powers."

"The practice of what is good" has now to