Identifier: opencourt_oct1903caru (find matches)
Title: The Open court
Year: 1887 (1880s)
Authors: Carus, Paul, 1852-1919 Open Court Publishing company, Chicago
Subjects: Religion Religion and science
Publisher: Chicago : The Open Court Pub. Co.
Contributing Library: Morris Library, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Digitizing Sponsor: CARLI: Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois

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issionaries. The dragon, the symbol of heaven, representing divine powerand authority, stands in the centre of the picture. It is the coat ofarms of the government, and it here carries on its back the shell ofthe tortoise, which is mysteriously connected in the old traditionsof China with the invention of writing. The dragon seems to ad-dress Confucius, and if this attitude is intentional it can only meanthat it communicates to the sage the mysteries of the Yih King,the Book of Changes.^ Above Confucius we see three sages; above Lao-Tze a crownedhero, holding in his hands a sword and dressed in a coat of mail.The former seem to represent the great authorities of the Confucianschool. Wen Wang, Wu Wang, and Chow Kung ; the military di-vinity must be Kwan Ti, the god of war. Underneath Confucius we have a general and a soldier, aspersonifications of the government, representing the mailed fist ofChinese paternalism. 1 For details see Carus, Chinese Philosophy. THE RELIGIONS OF CHINA. 623
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The Three Great Teachers of China. 624 THE OPEN COURT. Underneath Lao-Tze there are his disciples Chwang Tze, LiehFuh Tze, and Liu Ngan, the great Taoist philosophers. At the bottom of the picture we see lower divinities rising fromthe waves of the sea. One of them, on the left hand side, offersup a gem; another one, the ruler of the deep, carries a trident,while the middle figure in the group, on the right, is the nagaraja,producing from the bottom of the ocean the Avatamsaka Books. While in Europe and America every one is expected to haveone religion only, in China a man may follow Confucius, have faithin Buddha, and believe in Lao-Tze at the same time. Japan is in this respect like China, only that Taoism is replacedby Shintoism, and the latter, a kind of nature-cult combined withidealised patriotism, is the State religion. Every family takes partin the several Shinto festivals, private as well as public. In school-life Confucius is revered, and in both countries, China and Japan,t

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