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Chinese looked upon these foreigners as restless folk and drove them away to Macao." It was at any rate through this word that Europeans could first hope to find the track of that Analogy of Chinese Metaphysic with their own faith, which had been so persistently sought for; and it was doubtless owing to investigations of this kind that the results we find communicated in an Essay entitled Chinese Theory of the Creation were attained. 1 As to Choo-foo-tze, called also Choo-hi, who is mentioned in it, I observe that he lived in the twelfth century according to our chronology, and that he is the most celebrated of all the Chinese men of learning because he has collected together all the wisdom of his predecessors and reduced it to a system. His work is in our days the basis of all Chinese instruction, and his authority of the greatest weight. In the passage I allude to, we find: "The word Teen would seem to denote the highest among the great or above all what is great on earth: but in practice its vagueness of signification is beyond all comparison greater than that of the term Heaven in European languages. . . . Choo-foo-tze tells us that 'to affirm that heaven has a man (i.e. a sapient being) there to judge and determine crimes, should not by any means be said; nor, on the other hand, must it be affirmed, that there is nothing at all to exercise a supreme control over these things.'
The same author being asked about the heart of heaven, whether it was intelligent or not, answered: it must not be said that the mind of nature is unintelligent, but it does not resemble the cogitations of man. . . .
According to one of their authorities, Teen is called ruler or sovereign (Choo), from the idea of the supreme control, and another expresses himself thus: 'Had heaven (Teen) no designing mind, then it must happen, that the
1 To be found in the Asiatic Journal, vol. xxii. anno 1826, pp. 41 and 42.
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