The Jesuit was aware that the dignitaries treated him with respect because he was a friend of the minister of rites, but he was also convinced that the good impression he managed to make during the visits served in turn to reinforce the minister’s regard for him. This mechanism worked so well that Ricci saw it as a divine stratagem to further his religious mission: “God chose to make use of a splendid subterfuge . . . to make matters go more smoothly.”3
As a friend of the minister of rites, Ricci was invited to a number of official ceremonies, where he mixed with the shidafu and guan as though he were one of them. The minister’s sons took him to the Temple of Heaven at the beginning of March to hear the rehearsals for the concert to be held there shortly, on the occasion of the rites in honor of Confucius.
The Temple of Heaven, the most important place of worship in the city, was a complex of buildings representing the universe surrounded by walls and a moat. The component edifices, all sharing the same basic structure but differing in size, were set in vast courtyards with century-old trees that no one was ever allowed to prune. Reached by climbing flights of marble steps, the main building was a circular temple embellished with red, dark blue, and gold decorations and representing the celestial sphere. Like all the others, it was adorned with cosmological symbols, and its columns, steps, pillars, and stone slabs were all in multiples of nine, a number thought to play a key role in the organization of the world and hence recurrent in the Chinese tradition.
During the period when Nanjing was the capital, the emperor went to the temple twice a year to celebrate the rites ensuring harmony between the heavens and the earth and good harvests. After fasting for three days, the Son of Heaven would leave the imperial palace clad in yellow ceremonial robes adorned with dragons. Accompanied by a procession of dignitaries, elephants, eunuchs, musicians, and soldiers with banners representing the constellations of the zodiac, the planets, the holy mountains, and the rivers, he then proceeded solemnly along a route running from north to south. All the houses on the way were required to keep their doors and windows closed. Once inside the precincts of the temple, the emperor entered the Palace of Abstinence, where he spent the whole night purifying his body before performing the propitiatory rites. The following morning he proceeded to the circular altar to kneel down and make offerings before the empty throne of the Supreme Lord of the August Heaven placed beside his own. After the capital moved to Beijing, where a second and still more imposing Temple of Heaven was built, the imperial ceremonies were also transferred, and those in Nanjing were toned down.
Ricci went to the temple to listen to the music, an indispensable ingredient of all the most important ceremonies, which was performed as usual by Taoist monks. Music played a very important role in Chinese rites, being regarded by Confucius as endowed with moral value and capable of establishing peace and harmony among people. Different instruments were used for different types of events. The range included percussion, wind, and stringed instruments made of materials like bronze, leather, wood, stone, bamboo, and silk. Some had vaguely similar Western counterparts, such as drums of wood and leather, flutes, harmonicas, lutes, and psalteries. Others were typically Chinese, like the imposing carillon of bronze bells of different notes and sizes set in a wooden frame and played by percussion. This instrument of ancient origin was first produced in the fourth century bc, if not earlier, when the Chinese were already capable of casting bells of particular notes with a perfection that would have been considered extraordinary in the West at the time. Other characteristically Chinese instruments included the lithophone, consisting of slabs of stone hung on a wooden frame, and tiger-shaped percussion devices.
Ricci observed the more original instruments with great interest but found “no consonance” in the way they were played together and derived no pleasure from the concert. Unable to appreciate the music of another tradition,4 he was convinced that the “art of harmony” had been lost forever in China.
An Argument with a Buddhist
Ricci’s success in scholarly circles was due to the fame of his writings, his scientific expertise, and his knowledge of Confucian philosophy, something “unheard of in China” that never failed to astonish his listeners. This responsiveness to the culture of his intellectual friends stopped at Confucianism, however, and included no aspect of the Buddhist and Taoist doctrines, despite his awareness that a good many Confucian literati had sympathies with both. Some shidafu even professed a kind of religion combining elements of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism5 that had enjoyed considerable popularity in Nanjing and the Jiangsu province. Referred to disapprovingly by Ricci as followers of the “three sects,” its believers worshipped statues of Confucius, Buddha, and Lao-tzu placed side by side, an authentic abomination in the Jesuit’s eyes.
Despite his aversion for religious syncretism, the Jesuit was involved in friendly discussions with followers of the “three sects,” such as Jiao Hong, a high-ranking official temporarily suspended from office and living in Nanjing. It was through him that Ricci met the famous and highly controversial character Li Zhi, a guan who had left the bureaucracy and his position as prefect to devote himself to the study of Buddhism. This renowned scholar and intellectual paid Ricci a visit, complimented him on his treatise on friendship, and made him the gift of a fan decorated with verses in his honor. There was a widespread tradition of paying respects in the form of verses, normally written in books of visits. The slender volumes containing such poems were kept by their recipients as evidence of their social success, and Ricci had collected so many that, as he wrote with great satisfaction in his history of the mission, they would have made a bigger book than the Aeneid if he had put them all together.6
Li Zhi was greatly impressed by the personality of the Western sage and described him as follows: “While his extraordinary refinement is innate, his outward manner is of the simplest. I have never met his equal. [Unlike Ricci] people err through undue rigidity or obligingness; they make a show of their learning or are of limited intelligence.” Despite his great admiration for the man, the philosopher expressed misgivings as to the reasons for Ricci’s presence in China: “I do not really understand what he has come to do in this country. . . . I think that it would be more than foolish if his aim were to replace the teachings of the Duke of Zhou and Confucius with his own.”7
Meetings between leading figures in Chinese culture and Li Madou, the sage putting forward a new worldview and a new religion, inevitably involved the risk of heated discussions, and the Jesuit did in fact find himself reluctantly drawn into a particularly bitter argument. Together with Qu Taisu, he had made the acquaintance of Li Ruzhen, a shidafu with Buddhist sympathies, and had engaged in some friendly exchange of views. In the course of one of the customary philosophical debates held in the city, Li Ruzhen clashed with the orthodox Confucianist Liu Douxu, who accused him of not holding the Chinese state philosophy in due consideration and cited Li Madou, Xitai, in public as an example of a wise man in favor of Confucianism and hostile to Buddhism. The echoes of this had yet to die down when Li Ruzhen invited the Jesuit to a banquet. Unwilling to get embroiled in some inopportune dispute, Ricci declined at first on the grounds that he was fasting, but he felt obliged to accept when Li Ruzhen assured him that he would be served special dishes in accordance with his diet.
Ricci arrived at the banquet and took part in the customary ritual of greeting with the other guests, about twenty in all, taking tea together before going in to dine. It was then that the Buddhist monk Huang Hong’en—better known as Sanhuai and renowned for his books and poems as well as his expert knowledge of the three Chinese religions—asked him about the faith practiced by the missionaries.
According to Ricci’s account, he replied with a question: “What do you think of the Lord of Heaven, creator of all things?”
Sanhuai answered that he believed in the existence of the Lord of Heaven but, unlike the Jesuit, did not consider him a being superior
to man.
Shocked by the monk’s words, Ricci asked if he too was capable, like God, of creating everything that existed in the heavens and on the earth.
“Certainly,” he replied. “I too would be capable of creating the heavens and the earth.”
Ricci challenged him to prove this by producing a bronze brazier like the one burning in the room in front of all those present. This gave rise to a heated exchange, with Sanhuai dismissing the challenge as absurd and Ricci accusing him of having lied. Their curiosity aroused, the other guests gathered around to listen, some taking the Jesuit’s side and some the monk’s.
Sanhuai tried another approach: “You have the reputation of being a great astronomer and expert mathematician. Is this true?”
“I have a certain knowledge of these sciences.”
“So, when you speak about the sun and the moon, do you go up into the heavens where these celestial bodies are or do they come down to you?”
“Neither of these happens. When we see an object, we form an image of it in the mind, and when we speak about that object later on, even though we no longer have it in front of us, we refer to its mental image.”
Sanhuai replied: “In that case, you, who are a man, have created a new sun and a new moon, and therefore, just as I said, you can create whatever you want. I have proved that I am right.”
Ricci countered as follows: “The images I have formed within me are not the real sun and the real moon but only mental copies, and if I had never looked at the sun and the moon in the sky, I could never have recreated their images in my mind.” He went on to give an example: “If you see the sun and the moon reflected in a mirror, will you be so foolish as to believe that these celestial bodies are really contained in the mirror?”
Some of the guests—again according to Ricci’s account—shook their heads and acknowledged that the Jesuit was right, at which point the monk lost his temper, and the host had to step in and separate the two adversaries so as to avoid the discussion degenerating into a real argument. Li Ruzhen asked the guests to step into the dining room. Ricci was seated in the place of honor with the host beside him to begin the banquet after the customary rituals.
In the interval between one course and another, when a great many dishes had piled up on the table and numerous toasts had been drunk, some of the guests put forward a philosophical issue for amicable discussion, as was customary on such occasions. This time it was the classic question of the goodness of human nature, dating back to the earliest traditions and addressed by all the great Chinese philosophers. According to Mencius, every man is naturally good. According to the philosopher Xun Qing, who lived in the third century bc and is accredited with the authorship of the Xunzi, human nature is intrinsically wicked and man has a spontaneous tendency toward evil. Those taking the middle ground maintain that behavior is determined by external influences. The debate continued at the banquet in more or less the same terms as when it had begun many centuries before. If man’s nature is good, where does evil come from? If it is bad, where does good come from? If it is neither good nor bad, who can guide it toward goodness and how?
Ricci listened in silence, but when the host asked him to give his opinion, he seized the opportunity to resume the discussion with the monk Sanhuai. “We all agree that the Lord of Heaven is supremely good. Well then, if man is so weak that he does not know whether his nature is good or bad, how can Master Sanhuai claim that man is the equal of the Lord of Heaven? If he were truly the equal of the Lord of Heaven, how could he not know that he too is supremely good?”
Urged to answer by another guest, Sanhuai illustrated the Buddhist doctrine on this point to conclude that the Lord of Heaven is neither good nor bad. The argument finally came to an end with Ricci determined to say no more even if asked to continue, being now convinced that it was impossible to make the Chinese monk listen to reason. The latter was most probably also convinced that it was impossible to make a Western missionary listen to reason. It was in fact a debate of the deaf, as each of the adversaries was accustomed to reasoning solely in accordance with the postulates of his own philosophy. There was certainly no common ground between a Buddhist who believed that the world we perceive is not real and an Aristotelian convinced of the exact opposite, namely that the world is real and that the human mind can understand it by means of reason.
For a Buddhist, the absolute is beyond any determination and is innate in all beings, each of which possesses the nature of Buddha in the deepest recesses of its spirit. For Ricci, confusing the individual with God was simply heresy. The dispute was talked about for a long time in the city, and the Jesuit claims in his history of the mission that he was judged the moral victor.8 While we do not know whether this was so, many intellectuals with a passion for philosophical arguments visited the missionaries’ house to hear all about the clash and to spend the afternoon in discussion with Li Madou. He was flattered by their attention and decided to devote a chapter of his catechism to the subject of the goodness of human nature.
A Universe of Crystalline Spheres:
The “Treatise on the Four Elements”
Ricci ran up against the same old difficulties of mutual comprehension every time he talked to the Chinese, and he tried to point out what he considered the absurdity of their conceptions in order to guide them to the revelation of the Christian doctrine. The Jesuit was astonished to find that they did not reason in accordance with Western logic and did not distinguish, for example, the Aristotelian concepts of form, matter, substance, and accident. The Chinese conception of the universe as a great evolving organism with all of its parts interconnecting was in fact such as to preclude clear-cut distinctions like those between matter and spirit, between the world of the senses and the transcendental world, which were so fundamental for Western culture. What was obvious to Ricci was by no means so to the Chinese, and vice versa. For the latter, the only constant principle was the Tao, spontaneous order, the dynamic principle inherent in every natural process. According to Chinese cosmology, the universe was in a state of constant change and evolution due to the alternation of the two complementary and contrasting forces of yin—the female principle connected with shadow, the earth, passivity, and dissolution—and yang, the male principle connected with light, the sun, activity, and creation. These two forces gave birth to the five “agents” or elements of water, earth, fire, wood, and metal, seen as the dynamic processes forming the Whole through never-ending transformation into one another.
Certain that he knew the truth about the structure of the universe, Ricci was determined to demonstrate the erroneous nature of the vision of the world rooted in Chinese culture since the earliest times, and he hoped to do so by exploiting the evident curiosity of some intellectuals about his scientific knowledge. In Nanjing too, he had no difficulty finding scholars eager to learn about Western mathematics and astronomy and how to construct sundials, mechanical clocks, and rudimentary instruments for observation of the heavens. He was delighted to share his knowledge with them, feeling sure that they would embrace the Christian religion much more readily once they had realized that Western science was superior to theirs and understood and accepted the system of knowledge put forward by the Jesuits. Science had proved excellent “bait,” as Ricci put it, in the case of Qu Taisu, leading him on to follow the religious teachings too, even though he had not yet made up his mind to convert. Would others follow his example in Nanjing? Ricci intended to guide Chinese intellectuals by the hand up the steps of knowledge starting at the bottom. Having taught them to reason in accordance with the principles of mathematical logic, he would help them to comprehend the description of the Ptolemaic universe and finally to understand that God was the supreme lawgiver, creator of the world and of the laws governing it. He would proceed from mathematics to theology.
His first pupil in Nanjing was Zhang Yangmo, a young man from Beijing sent by Wang Kentang, a mandarin in the capital who studied mathe
matics out of personal interest with a group of pupils. Wang Kentang was a member of the illustrious Hanlin Academy made up of the most influential bureaucrats, who were responsible for writing dynastic histories, drafting the most important government documents, and serving as tutors to the crown prince. According to Ricci, the academician wrote to say that he was aware of the lack of method in Chinese mathematics and wished to learn everything the Jesuit had to teach him. Since he could not leave the capital, he took the liberty of sending the pupil Zhang Yangmo in his place.
Zhang Yangmo learned “to do sums with the brush” and then read the first book of Euclid’s Elements in Qu Taisu’s translation, which impressed him so much that “he would only listen to arguments developed in the Euclidean way.”7 Noting once again that Confucian literati were fascinated by Greek mathematics, Ricci began to think that his plans to implant Western reason in the Chinese might actually work. Zhang Yangmo was so happy about learning Western science that he wanted to give Ricci some advice on the best way to refute the Buddhist beliefs before returning to Beijing. In his opinion, Ricci should simply go on teaching mathematics and astronomy until he convinced his adversaries of the validity of his knowledge. If he proved that his scientific doctrines described the world with greater accuracy, the Buddhists would be convinced that his explanation of the supernatural world was also more correct. While appreciating the advice, Ricci doubted that it would prove effective, and in any case he had no intention of devoting his energies to convincing Buddhists, preferring to concentrate on the attempt to win over the Confucian scholars.
Matteo Ricci Page 23