JOURNAL OF ORIENTAL STUDIES

sion that Professor Fehl has his own notion of Iiwhich cannot be substantiated by the significationsof the word as it occurs in the texts cited.

But then, not knowing Chinese well and, pos­sibly, not knowing modern semantics, ProfessorFehl soldiers on. Part one of the book displays theauthor's weakness must mercilessly. Nut a singleobservation or conclusion is borne out by primarysources. Creel, Eberhard, Cheng Te-k'un, HoPing-ti, the early Kuo Mo-jo, and even LiangCh'i-ch'ao, et al., are heavily relied upon. One isleft wondering why the author, instead of writinga book, has not simply published a reading list.Nor does the author have the abilities of a Toynbeeto absorb, to digest, and to present with confidencea clear and reasonably accurate picture. I wasconstantly astounded by the bewildering accountof ancient Chinese history presented in Part one(l was also reminded of Fan \Ven-lan's far superiorHistory first published as far back as 1949, whichapparently never crossed Professor Fehl's path).

This leads to the question: what readership didthe author have in mind? (Consider the style ofwriting and compare, e.g., footnote 54 on p. 16 andthe next on p. 50). For the layman the work is tooheavily laden with 'learned' references. For thestudent of 'world history' without expert know­ledge of Chinese history, it is deficient in basicbackground information, especially where theauthor refers to persons and places. For thesinologist, it would be sheer impudence. And allthree classes of reader would be irked by the lengthyand laborious regurgitations of 'pre-historic'Chinese legends (compare for example Pl'. 10-IIand 53). Further, the historian would feel insultedby the parallels drawn, such as the comparisonbetween l\Ieneius and Jesus (pl" 9u-7) and others(Pl'. 24, 63, 218). The sinologist would be per­turbed by the author's ignorance of the fact thatTiel/-well is part of Clt'u-tz'u and not a separatework (cf. Pl'. IS and 49). The layman would, onthe whole, be baffied and confused.

Professor Fehl also places himself in an awkwardsituation by occasionally venturing into makingunqualified statements-watch out wherever thereis an undocumented assertion. 'A new age wasushered in with the enthronement of Wu-ting whooutlived three queens and dealt fairly with sixconcubines' (I'. S0; incidentally, the style of writingis telling). 'All the scholars from Mo-ti to Liu Hsinwere historians' (I" 58). 'In general I am disposedto take the Odes as a largely contemporaneousdescription of Chinese culture in the Spring andAutumn era .. .' (I" 105). And there arc manyother similarly question-begging pontifieations.

There are good moments in the study. ProfessorFehl is almost as profound as, though far lessarticulate and elegant than, Roland Barthes whenhe says, 'Civilization is a learning that has its rootsin a literature, a written code, that is the heritage

of generations, the distillation of the wisdom of thepast made available to the future .... Writing isitself a refinement-man's assurance against thewaste of experience' (p. 99). Similarly, 'Quotationsfrom the cJassics are possibly the least trustworthyevidence for dating and the history of ideas inpre-Ch'in literature' (p. 109).

But Professor Fehl really approaches Socraticwisdom when comparing himself with the lateJoseph Levenson and admitting to 'lacking theprecision of his [i.e. Levenson's] mind, with nohope ever of the breadth and depth of his sinolo-gical scholarship ... .' .

The essential part of my impression of ProfessorFehl's work concludes appropriately, I think, withan unfinished quotation.

SIU-KlT WONG

UniVErsity of JIong K01~g

Science and civili:::ation in China. Vol. 5, Chemistryand chemical technology; Pt. 11: Spagyrical dis­covery atid invention: magisteries of gold andimll/ortality, by JOSEPHNEEDHA:\t,with the colla­boration of Lu GWEI-DJEN. London: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1974. xx-xii, 5101'. Plates, tables,bibliographies, index. US$35.00, £12.00.

A SCIIOLAHequally competent in Western andChinese languages, physical sciences and bioche­mistry will perhaps never again be found. Thepeculiar importance of Needham's massive worklies simply in this. Its scope is far greater thanmerely the history of Chinese science and techno­logy. Because of th.c immense range and variety ofknowledge available and comprehensible to a singlemind, the principal author is able to put his storyin its proper setting and in so doing to rewrite andreinterpret the history of related developments inother parts of the world. Even more important, thetechnical terminology and procedures have beeninterpreted by one having actual practical know­ledge of laboratory work. Much that was obscureto Chinese commentators of later ages, qualifiedonly in a literary sense, is now made plain or atleast plausible.

The present tome contains only the early partsof Section 33. 'Alchemy and Chemistry', whichwill be continued as Volume five, Parts three tofive. Although containing the whole apparatus ofbibliography, etc., it is thus not in itself an organicwhole. The bulk of the book is concerned withconcepts and terminology and with metallurgy,although there is substantial discussion also ofelixirs. A scheme of ideas recognizable as 'alchemy'is present from the time of Tsou YEN IJHrr in the4th century B.C. The particular combination oftheories which characterizes that pseudoscience ispeculiarly Chinese in flavour and probably also inorigin. We are all familiar with the idea of alchemy

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T. R. C. BOYDE

as the search for the twin objectives of the philoso­pher's stone (capable of changing base metals intogold) and the elixir of Ife. Needham's contentionis that while the first was the aim of researchesequally in Hellenic and Chinese cultures, the latterwas absent in Classical times around the Mediter­ranean, appearing suddenly in the twelfth century,whereas it had developed steadily in China along­side the very rich tradition of herbal and mineral'medicines' and under the influence of Taoist ideason the possibility of an immortal, incorruptiblebody. Much of the evidence is of a kind unfamiliarto students of the Hellenic era-that is to say,books which have been in print for a thousand yearsor so, many of which have commentaries accom­panying much earlier texts.

I t is not claimed that each and every discoverywas made in China, though some may well havebeen. The evidence for importation of ideas andmaterials is, in fact, very strong. But the peculiarfusion of ideas into one theoretical system mustapparently have taken place in that country.

Probably the most valuable parts of the bookconcern the alloys and surface-treatment effectsused to simulate gold or silver. Needham heremakes a valuable distinction between aurifiction­the deliberate imitation ('f gold either with theintention to deceive or merely for decorative effect-and aurifaction-the self-deluding manufactureof what is held to be true gold. It has been technic­ally possible to identify and assay true gold (bycupellation) for almost 3,000 years. The difficultyabout universal application of this test was thatbefore the growth of modern chemistry it was notat all clear why the cupcllation test should beabsolute. For aurifaction, it was only necessary toredefine gold by reference, say, to its appearanceonly, and the artificial material might then be equalor even superior to the natural.

For making many alloys it was not necessary,even not possible, to isolate first the constituentelemental metals. An easier if less certain route wasto smelt a mixture'of'ores (or a naturally mixed ore)or to add the ore of the alloying metal to a melt ofthe bulk metal. All were certainlv done in ancientChina. Gold-like brasses, arseni~al copper alloys(which may resemble gold or silver depending onthe arsenic content), and silvery cupronickel wereall made, as is clear from the literary descriptionsand from recent analytical work, whereas zinc metalwas only isolated much later and arsenic and nickelwere never isolated at all. Interestingly enough,zinc metal and cupronickel (paktong 8if.;j) weresignificant exports in recent times; the latter mayeven have been exported to Hellenic Bactria in the2nd century D.C. to form the basis of the earliestknown cupronickel currency. One can well imaginethe origin of the alchemical 'projection' theory inobservations of the remarkable cllects of small

amounts of a mineral (i.e. a Stone!) on the colour

of copper; even more so, perhaps, in regard to theinfinitesimal amounts of foreign material requiredto induce some surface effects.

The story iri respect of gold is on relatively solidground and belief in aurifaction easily understood.It is much harder to understand the persistence ofbelief in elixirs, many of which were extremelypoisonous, as Needham emphasises, and must haveled to rapid death or an abbreviated and miserablelife. Medical knowledge remains to this day veryinexact. It is not possible to say that the explana­tions advanced for a possible initial benefit whentaking mineral-based elixirs are definitely wrong(chemotherapeutic cure of parasite infestations,replacement of deficient ~race elements), only thatneither is definitely correct. To digress moment­arily, doubt would attach even to whether antimony­containing elixirs could have.produced detectableclinical benefit to those suffering from schistoso­miasis-and people wealthy enough to afford elixirswould probably have minimal contact with thatparticular disease. Medical science remains inexactbecause it is peculiarly difficult to establish facts inthe face of the capacity for self-deceit of patientsand physicians alike. The persistence of belief inelixirs must presumably, then, be sought chiefly inthe 'religious' ideas of the people, coupled with thequite definite psychopharmacological effects of afew drugs which were used in Taoist religiousceremonies to induce abnormal states of mind.Needham mentions a few preparations which maypossibly have had genuine detectable effects of thedesired kind (for example p,utative concentrates ofsteroid sex hormones), but even here it must beseriously questioned whether this was the basis ofthe usage. It seems more likely that the basis wasreally a species of magic depending on 'sympathy'and 'signatures', such as appears in other areas ofChinese traditional medicine. One must not go toofar. It may at some time become possible to assessaccurately the probably therapeutic benefit ofelixirs and other traditional medicincs, and it mayprove that the doubts here expressed are unwar'­ranted. But, fur the moment, profound scepticismremains a justifiable attitude.

University of Hong Kong

Chinese literature: an anthology from the earliesttimes to the present day, edited by WILLIAM

McNAUGHTON. Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Com­pany, 1974. 836p. US$IS·OO.

IT has been pointed out that this anthology hasused only those translations which will appeal tothe \Vestern reader on literary grounds and as aresult, the works in this collection are as alive andexciting to an English-speaking reader as are thegreat classics in his own language. The translators

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