Chinese thinking is a history of a gradual distancing of man from supernatural beings and their influence, ending in an essentially humanistic approach to life. From the Ch’un Ch’iu period (722–481 BCE) onward, there is a progressively more humanistic interpretation of laws and statutes, regarded previously as being of divine origin.

Confucius (551–479 BCE Kǒng Fūzǐ, meaning “Master Kong”) was not primarily a religious thinker. His teachings were compiled many years after his death in the Analects, in which we learn that “The Master would not discuss prodigies, prowess, lawlessness nor supernatural beings.” His doctrines were described as “this worldly social-mindedness” by historian of Chinese civilization Joseph Needham. As to religious rituals, Confucius and his school rejected their magical power to affect spirits, ancestors, or local deities. Max Weber even compares his philosophy to Jeremy Bentham’s and the Utilitarians:

In the sense of the absence of all metaphysical and almost all residue of religious anchorage, Confucianism is rationalist to such a far-going extent that it stands at the extreme boundary of what one might call a “religious” ethic. At the same time, Confucianism is more rationalistic and sober, in the sense of the absence and rejection of all non-utilitarian yardsticks, than any other ethical system with the possible exception of J. Bentham’s.

In early Taoism, the mythological view of the world gave way to a kind of “pantheistic naturalism,” which, according to Joseph Needham, underlay the development of science and technology in China. We know little of Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism, but he probably lived during the Warring States Period, that is, somewhere between 480 and 222 BCE. The naturalistic emphasis in early Taoism is clear from the way in which the Taoists regarded the Tao itself. We can read of the natural world in the Tao Te Ching, a text credited to Lao Tzu:

The Tao gave birth to it

The Virtue [of the Tao] reared it

Things [within] endowed it with form,

Influences [without] brought it to its perfection.

Therefore of the ten thousand things there is not one that does

not worship the Tao and do homage to its Virtue. Yet the worshipping

of the Tao, and the doing of homage to its Virtue, no mandate ever decreed.

Always this [adoration] was free and spontaneous.

Therefore [as] the Tao bore them, and the Virtue of the Tao

reared them, made them grow, fostered them, harboured them,

fermented them and incubated them—[so one must]

Rear them but not lay claim to them,

Be chief among them but not lord it over them;

This is called the invisible virtue.

The Tao referred to is the whole Order of Nature, which is originator and sustainer of all that is. Despite the mystical attitude, it is nonetheless an essentially naturalistic interpretation of the world. As Jospeh Needham says, “We have, therefore, a pantheistic naturalism which emphasizes the unity and spontaneity of the operations of Nature.” All speculation about the origins and ultimate end of Nature were discouraged—to achieve peace only contemplation of Nature was necessary. The Taoists stressed the eternity and uncreatedness of the Tao, as we read in the Tao Te Ching:

There was something formless yet complete,

That existed before heaven and earth;

Without sound, without substance,

Dependent on nothing, unchanging,

All pervading, unfailing.

One may think of it as the mother of all things under heaven.

Its true name we do not know;

Were I forced to say to what class of things it belongs

I should call it Great (ta)

Now ta also means passing on,

And passing on means going Far Away,

And going far away means returning.

Thus just as Tao has “this greatness” and as earth has it and as heaven has it,

So may the ruler also have it.

Thus “within the realm there are four portions of greatness,”

And one belongs to the king.

The ways of men are conditioned by those of earth.

The ways of earth, by those of heaven.

The ways of heaven by those of Tao, and the ways of Tao by the Self-so.

 

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Wang Ch’ung (27–97 CE) is known as the Lucretius of China, an independent thinker who championed reason and combatted superstition in a series of critical essays, Discourses Weighed in the Balance (Lun Hêng). He had a hatred of “fictions and falsehoods”:

In his essays he maintains, contrary to the belief of his day and age, that “Heaven” takes no action; that natural events, including prodigies, occur spontaneously, that there is no such thing as teleology in nature; that fortune and misfortune come by chance; and that man does not become a ghost after death but disintegrates into nothingness.

His attitude toward natural processes allows for chance but is on the whole deterministic. He uses the term ming to describe natural processes, a term reminiscent of necessity in early Greek philosophy. He denies consciousness and motivation to “Heaven” and holds a naturalistic worldview. Heaven being incorporeal, and earth inert, cannot act or speak. He denies that what happens in the world is the result of human merit or demerit. Heaven and earth cannot be affected by anything that man does; they do not listen to prayers, and they do not reply to questions. Rather things happen by chance or accident. He also denies purpose in the world, which is not the creation of a divine designer. Thus, divination is denied.

Wang Ch’ung constantly attacks anthropocentrism. He describes “man’s life on earth as like that of lice living in the folds of a garment. Whilst recognizing that man, (by reason of his intelligence), is the highest of all known beings on earth, man is still, as are lice, part of the natural order.” Man’s happiness is in his own hands; spirits have nothing to do with it. Wang Ch’ung constantly offers a naturalistic explanation for what most people in his time would have explained in terms of supernatural causation.

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As Joseph Needham says, “Throughout subsequent Chinese history the sceptical tradition runs on. Indeed, it stands out as one of the great achievements of that culture, when one compares it with the rabble of religious and magical writings dominant in some other civilizations.” That the skeptical tradition from about the seventh century onward was robust can be witnessed in the stories that attacked superstition more and more frequently. Then in the Sung dynasty (960–1279), we have skeptics such as Ch’u Yung and Shih Chieh (1005–1045). The latter wrote a ferocious skeptical attack on some prevalent superstitions in his work Lai Chi:

I believe that there are three illusory things in this world, immortals, the alchemical art, and Buddheity. These three things lead all men astray, and many would willingly give up their lives to obtain them. But I believe that there exists nothing of the sort, and I have good grounds for saying so. If there were any one many in the world who had obtained them, no one would be more honoured than he. Then no one would strive without accomplishment or pray without response … Ch’in Shih wished to become immortal, Han Wu Ti wished to to make gold, and Liang Wu Ti wished to become a Buddha, and they spent themselves in these aims. But Ch’in Shih Huang Ti died on a long journey, Liang Wu Ti starved himself to death, and Han Wu Ti never obtained any gold.

Space forbids me to dwell at any length on later developments of the naturalistic and skeptical tradition in Chinese philosophy, but there is abundant evidence for it. The entire neo-Confucian school is naturalistic. Chu His (1131–1200 CE) was a very influential thinker who was thoroughly naturalistic, as was Liu Chi (1311–1375 CE), who had a truly scientific mind. Hsieh Ying-Fan attacked many superstitions in his classic work Pien Huo Pien. The most outstanding skeptic of the early Ming dynasty (1368–1644) was Ts’ao Tuan (1376–1434 CE). In the late Ming period, we find the materialist Wang Ch’uan-Shan (1619–1692 CE). In fact, there developed a whole materialist school with such scholars as Yen Yuan (1635–1704 CE) and Li Kung (1659–1733 CE).

Unbelief in Siamese Civilization

Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (1605–1689 CE), a gem merchant and traveler, wrote in 1678 in his Six Voyages of the Siamese monks he encountered: “If one asks them [the monks, or bonzes] where their God is, they answer that He has disappeared and that they do not know where He is.” Nicolas Gervaise (1663–1729 CE) was a Jesuit missionary who spent four years in Siam. He wrote in his Histoire Naturelle et Politique du Royaume de Siam that the Siamese believed in neither a “First Principle” nor an “Author of all things.” Gervaise explains further, “According to them, the world has no Creator or Master; it is the work of chance; and all of the parts that compose it were assembled on their own; it has always been or rather one could not indicate any instant when it has not been.” Paradoxically, Gervaise goes on to argue that these were heathen misunderstandings of God, in whom the Siamese in fact believed. Simon de la Loubère was Louis XIV’s envoyé extraordinaire to Siam, where he lived for two years, and he wrote about the beliefs of the Siamese: “They have no sort of theology, and one perhaps could exculpate them of the accusation of a cult of false divinities by means of a yet more culpable impiety, which is to know no Divinity, neither true nor false.”

In another account that he wrote, de la Loubère tells us that “men of letters … today have no sentiment of religion and believe neither in the existence of any God nor in the immortality of the soul.” They “acknowledge no intelligent [supreme] Being … [but] only a blind fatality.” He wrote that in the entire teachings of the Siamese, there is no idea of divinity. The ancient pagans, according to de la Loubère, indeed “had possessed confused views of things divine but nonetheless had believed in Divinity, even an Epicurus who denied the providence of the gods. … But the Siamese have no similar idea … [and] I believe that one can be certain that [they] have no idea of any God.” Indeed, the Siamese had lost the idea of divinity “totally and without any ambiguity.” In brief, “they should be called atheists rather than idolators.”