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![]() ![]() The Afflatus of the East is antagonistic to the Centre the Afflatus of the Centre is antagonistic to the North the Afflatus of the North is antagonistic to the South the Afflatus of the South is antagonistic to the West the Afflatus of the West is antagonistic to the East. As soon as we see a thing produced, it is destroyed and having witnessed its destruction, we see it come into being again. There is no benefit intended towards man when the Five Atmospheric Influences * are set in motion how, then, can there be any intentional injury to things? Observing the nourishing and beneficial results of these Influences, men call it virtue observing the injury and ruin they cause, men call it spoliation. Thus Heaven has Five Despoilers: and he who perceives them will flourish. It is only by observing the T AO of Heaven, and grasping that, that the limit can be reached. Thus Principles have no unvarying course, and facts no essential uniformity both belong to the region of the unlimited. Principles have their root in circumstances, or facts and facts being determined, it is Principles by which they are modified or varied. The root of Heaven is in T AO and T AO being fixed, Heaven secures it and so brings about its transmutations. ![]() To observe the T AO of Heaven, and grasp its method of operation, is the limit of all achievement. The edition now translated bears the name of Chang Shih-ch‘un as editor, a scholar of Honan who lived in the reign of Ts‘ung Chêng, last Emperor of the Mings. The idea is a remarkably beautiful one, and the representation of such a 'Clue to the Unseen' by a divided seal, strikes us as singularly forcible and apt. In this book the two halves of the seal are professedly brought together, and we are thus enabled to perceive the hidden harmony which runs through all things where before we could see nothing but discord, and are presented with an explanation of all the mysteries of the world, the secret coincidences between the Seen and the Unseen, of which in our unenlightened state we are profoundly ignorant. On one half of this seal we have the visible phenomena of the world around us this we can all see, but, the diagram being incomplete, we require the other half of the seal, that bearing the # of Heaven or the Unseen World, before we can understand the why and the wherefore of the existing order of things. Our translation of the title, Yin Fu, # is of course merely approximative, and may be criticised accordingly. ![]() Wylie, is to "reconcile the decrees of Heaven with the current of mundane affairs." It is supposed to contain the very root and essence of Taoism, and its entire freedom from all allusions to the later and baser developments of that philosophy appears to constitute a strong argument in favour of its distant origin. The aim of this ancient compilation, to quote the authority of Mr. The earliest Commentator who published an edition of the work is said to have been Chiang Tsze-ya, otherwise known as T‘ai Kung, #, the famous Minister of Hsi Pŏ, and a reputed descendant of the Yellow Emperor so, if this were true, we should be able to trace its existence at least as far back as the Shang dynasty, or say twelve hundred years before Christ. Tradition ascribes its authorship to the mythical Emperor Huang Ti, or one of his six Ministers but although it of course appeared at a considerably later date than this, all scholars agree in attributing it to a very remote antiquity. T HIS treatise is one of the most interesting and important in the Taoist canon. ![]()
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