On the one hand, absence of
communication keeps the mind absorbed in animal
self-contemplation; on the other, absence of motion, gradually
changing social life into mechanical routine, finally eliminates
the idea of will and providence. Strange fact! religion, which
perishes through progress, perishes also through quiescence.
[2] The Chinese have preserved in their traditions the
remembrance of a religion which had ceased to exist among them
five or six centuries before our era.
(See Pauthier, "China," Paris, Didot.) More surprising still is
it that this singular people, in losing its primitive faith,
seems to have understood that divinity is simply the collective
me of humanity: so that, more than two thousand years ago, China
had reached, in its commonly-accepted belief, the latest results
of the philosophy of the Occident. "What Heaven sees and
understands," it is written in the Shu-king, "is only that which
the people see and understand. What the people deem worthy of
reward and punishment is that which Heaven wishes to punish and
reward.
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