| Replies in Self-Defense:...: |
These works are neither creations nor relations. The Five Classics can be regarded as creations. The History of the Grand Annalist, the Introduction of Liu Zi Zheng, and the Records of Pan Shu Pi may be called relations, and the "New Reflections" of Huan Chun Shan and the "Critical Reflections" of Tsou Po Chi, discussions. Now the Lun-heng and the Zheng-wu are like the two Reflections of Huan Chun Shan and Tsou Po Chi, and not what they call creations. To produce something new that did not exist in the past, as Tsang Hsieh invented writing and Hsi Chung, chariots, is creating. The Yi-jing says of Fu Xi that he created the eight diagrams. They did not exist before, and Fu Hsi made them, hence the term creating is used. Wen Wang evolved these eight pictures, and brought their number up to sixty-four, which is called amplifying. To say that the composition of the Lun-heng is similar to that of the sixty-four figures is not correct either. In regard to the sixty-four diagrams, these figures were increased by an amplification of their forms, and their number was thus augmented. Now in the Lun-heng the current literature is taken up with the object of defining right and wrong and distinguishing between truth and falsehood. It is not an original production of something that did not exist previously. The Confucianists take the sayings of former teachers and criticise them, as clerks subject the decisions of the lord chief-justice to a new examination. If the term creating be applied to the Lun-heng, would the same word be used of the Confucianists and the clerks? |