The dispute between Me, Herbert Spencer and Mr. Frederic Harrison has w special interest for students of Chinese, besides the veral interest which any attempts tu explain or to clear up the mind about the supernatural must have for all people who aniuse themselves by thinking, Ench dis-put ant app with confidence to the Chinese as bearing out his view; and Europeans who know the Chinese best have not, it is suspected, the clearest of ideas on the subject. Many of those best able to jndyo are missionaries, whu are, perhaps, scarcely free to deal with ouch matters in n scientific spirit, 'The writer has made' the following notes with the intention of exciting thought and enquiry, and not of giving instruction, which by is quite unable to do, A native literate to whom the point in dispute was explained by an example, vi whether the Chinese worshipped a hill itself, or a Spirit of the Hill, and, if the latter, whether the Spirit had been'a man, replied that it seemed probable that there were itits of Hills; for, if not, who looked nus stones which they con= has been men once; for example the God of War had been a General under the Han Dynasty about 200A.D a holy and celebrated man had lived in the neighbourhood of a Hill or River he somes times became after death the Spirit of that Hill or River. So said our lettered friend. But let us construct " theory and deduce therefrom—a harmless form of amusement if one remembers that it is but a theory until shown to agree with observed facts, Thehuman race in the course of its develop= ment from a lower state passed through a stage when the mind regarded all power or motion as the property of life—the conception in a dog's mind when he barks at the moon, ose a man were killed by a venomous bite; serpent was of his death: but support by li ome living object ed with the act, and, none appearing, an invisible person was invented, All facta caused by what we call the powers of nature were attributed to the action of living creatures. A mountain cast down stones or water and hoarded precious stones in its recesses; these were the deeds of the Spirit of the Mountain, Disease swept away whole villages; clearly, the Goddess of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.