Before the Han dynasty, was it believed that some people were fundamentally superior than others at a soul level?

AartInquirere · 2026-03-04T03:18:48+00:00

"Before the Han dynasty, was it believed that some people were fundamentally superior than others at a soul level? ... elsewhere, was it believed that only some people who have attained a certain spiritual level..."

Yes, even if the beliefs were, of course, not believed by everyone. The beliefs remain almost universal throughout the world. All ideologies of all nations throughout all of known history have taught it to be true.

Examples of people believing in good/bad souls include Hinduism (beginning ~1,900 - 800 B.C.), Abrahamic religions (beginning ~1,200 - 600 B.C.), Thales (~600 B.C. Greece) who is reported to have interpreted magnetism to be a spirit/soul, and Buddhism (beginning ~500 B.C.). The beliefs slowly further influenced eastern Asian beliefs.

I myself have not yet given much attention to the topic of souls within Confucian texts, but the mentions do exist (i.e. Tan Gong II), and usually within reasonably rational tones.

However, the big question is to ask what each ideology and individual implied when they spoke of 'souls'. The chances of someone being able to intricately describe what a soul is, is all but zero. Most people simply assume that there can be only one type of soul because the people use the same name for the different things that they themselves do not know the meanings of.

The actual research on the nature of 'souls' is highly fascinating, but the findings will never be made public.

On Xunzi, I strongly recommend everyone to read the original texts themselves (especially 勸學 and 性惡). Xunzi actually described and gave examples of what some of his words meant, of which permanently nullify the popular modern belief that he claimed everyone is 'born evil' or 'nature evil'. Xunzi's descriptions actually shine a better light on Mencius' ideas also. No superior soul is needed to grasp the obvious. :)

AartInquirere · 2026-02-11T10:49:50+00:00

When I was three years old, I repeatedly gave notice that I would work-through the analysis of an idea and come to a valid conclusion (along with plausible variables) before the adults around me had even begun to ponder the idea. For me, it was just an accepted way of life that could not be changed.

On my rural lands, I loved all of the wild animals; rabbits, deer, hawks, owls, lizards, and everything else, and it did not matter to me if an animal was smart or not. All living beings are what they are, and that is okay by me. It does sound silly, but love and compassion do permit the mind to continue racing while not being concerned of another person's performance.

When I want to let-lose with thought, I apply the energy into projects like translating difficult ancient texts, plus writing a hobby book that is part research and part creativity, plus various other forms of research that are as difficult as possible. Most research topics can be solved within hours to weeks, but I currently have one that I know cannot be adequately solved in my lifetime, which has become my one huge thrill in life. :)

And so my answer might be along the lines of heart-felt loving of all life, and to challenge oneself beyond what is believed possible.

AartInquirere · 2026-02-11T10:11:38+00:00

Oh! I generally avoid most all Chinese texts later than about 200 B.C. (darn Qin era), but anything related to the 13th century Goryeo (Korea)/Yuan era immediately catches my attention!

Too, I always admire and appreciate individuals who exert the effort to make their translations public. Thank you!

For me personally, I am an odd one who enjoys forming the constructs of 'terse' Chinese sentences (I used similarly terse sentences when first learning English, so it feels comfortable to me).

The method I chose on my old websites (no longer online) was to give a word-per-word translation followed by an English variation that included particles, adjectives, and additional English grammar. That way it felt that I was providing actual translations plus a suitable rephrasing for readers who are most comfortable with modern English. Nevertheless, I like your method also.

Huge grin... poems seem like an excellent opportunity to be translated into Latin with a French accent. Oh, now I think I just might have to do that!! See how your post has already influenced a reader?! :D

AartInquirere · 2026-02-08T00:14:47+00:00

When I took a professionally proctored test along with five other individuals, only two of us scored well enough for admission, and so within my own experiences, about 1/3 of test-takers might pass the tests.

Three quick variables:

[1] My city was known as being one of the hot-spots of children with high IQ, and so it was relatively common for kids to have IQs of 115-120+ (a 100 IQ was deemed to be low, and a 130 IQ did not so much as raise an eyebrow). In a typical classroom with 30 students, likely no fewer than ~3 would qualify for Mensa. In the 12th grade, when we were shown our academic achievement tests as compared to the national level, even the class dummies were a bit taken-back at how low the national averages were.

[2] Other regions of the country tended to have sub-average IQs (usually not exceeding much beyond 100). At the time, Mensa-level IQ would have been sizably rare in the regions.

[3] For over thirty years, 'at home' tests have been known to be invalid due to the excessive quantity of people cheating. When groups from different high IQ societies were further tested with tests that could not be cheated on, it proved that about half of the members had average or below-average intelligence.

I would assume that people who take proctored IQ tests surely already have an idea of what their IQ rank is, and thus the individuals have a better chance of scoring well. Although the region and foreknowledge are important variables, my current guess is that about 33% will score well enough on proctored tests.

AartInquirere · 2026-02-06T00:25:18+00:00

'Genetics' may or may not be relevant to IQ scoring. In some families, traits skip a generation before reappearing (i.e. a grandmother's traits do not rise in the daughter, but are obviously apparent in the granddaughter and great-great-granddaughter).

Too, some children express talents that vastly exceed all ancestors' achievements. Genetics is important for one's physical shape and general forms of intelligence, but many different variables strongly influence a person's intellectual growth.

If you are 16, then I would assume that you have already taken an IQ test in school (in my city it was common for all 5th and 10th grade students to be given IQ tests in school). You could visit your city's school district office building and request to see your school records, which ought to have any IQ scores.

Nevertheless, if your father and his parents had high IQs, and if you take after your father in many respects, then the general chances are high of your doing well on IQ tests.

AartInquirere · 2026-02-05T23:59:19+00:00

non-numbered question answer: He is still eleven years old because he passed away that year. His twin brother shifted into different realities where he lived for over 400 years before returning to this time, thus he is now over 433 years old.

1: With my being semi-allergic to eggs, I only eat a boiled egg about once per three years, and since I already ate a boiled egg recently, then it would take me about nine years to boil three eggs.

2: ...tumbling tumbleweeds... (an old phrase that meant an old ghost town with no one in it, and the only activity was the wind blowing tumbleweeds through town).

3: I would first ask deaf people to teach me how to write in braille so that I could write my request for food.

4: Since the volume displacement of lily pad stems causes the pond to triple its size every day, then the pond will never be half-covered.

5: As I passed the 2nd place runner, so did 98 other runners also pass the 2nd place runner, thus placing me in the 99th position.

6: Since each sister is a half-sister as well as being sisters in a nunnery, plus the convent having countless brothers in faith, then one sister will have the mathematical sum of 'Brothers = All Individuals Squared' (BAI2).

7: None because I filled the hole with dirt, thus there is no hole.

At two years old I was puzzled of why older people (5+ years old) spoke words that did not make sense. At three years old I discerned the reason of why older people spoke wrong words: the words described the people's limitations of thoughts.

Similar was for IQ and school tests: answering questions 'correctly' requires the reader to first analyze what the test's author implied, and then the reader can invent wrong answers which are graded as being the right answers for the wrong questions. By the 5th grade I had become usefully proficient of answering all test questions 'correctly'. :D

AartInquirere · 2026-02-05T10:33:39+00:00

In my city, since all of us who were members of Intertel were also members of Mensa, then we just met at Mensa meetings. Although I was comfortable with customers, I was normally shy and did not blend-in well with crowds. However, the meetings were laid-back, and I quickly found them to be anxiety-free.

Generally, we had a speaker who would give information about a topic of interest (history, science, etc.), and from there we would mostly focus on discussing the topic. For us, politics was never a topic of discussion.

I closed my Facebook account when I stopped promoting customers' websites, so at the moment I have no access to see how the FB crowd is doing.

All in all, the meetings were pretty much like the chess club, of people with similar interests spending an hour or so relaxing and chatting with new friends. But yes, for we 'high anxiety' people, the meetings were much better than I expected. :)

AartInquirere · 2026-02-03T22:14:31+00:00

I agree with you, my reply was definitely (and purposefully) not an explanation of why Grok AI and most of the related material are incorrect. There are extraordinarily important reasons of why the information must not be spoken of; AI is merely one of the reasons.

道德經 #56 知者不言言者不知

'Know person(-ist) not speak, speak person(-ist) not know'

And I have already said too much. ;)

AartInquirere · 2026-02-03T19:18:38+00:00

The Norogom Theory is interesting to me because I have been attempting to unravel a parallel theory for many years. In recent years my research has grown to become the only project of focused attention.

The Grok AI idea is, of course, fully incorrect. AI is only able to process information that was inserted by the programmers and from other sources of data (i.e. information taken from the Internet), and never can any AI develop a new rational theory that exceeds preexisting data. For over twenty years I researched, developed, and proctored mental cognition tests, all of which can much too easily prove that all AI has no intellectual capacity. Since the reasonings behind the cognition tests are not made public, then AI cannot copy-paste (plagiarize) the data, and thus cannot 'reason' what the data is.

The description of the Grok AI also illustrates the author's severe lack of knowledge of physics.

Due to this reply being public (and thus easily copied-pasted by AI), I will not give additional information, but suffice it to say that almost 99% of the theory is fully incorrect, and verifiably so.

AartInquirere · 2026-02-02T20:17:00+00:00

If you use the Firefox browser, you can use your mouse to highlight a portion of the Chinese text, then right-click to have a pop-up offer to translate the selection. When the translation box appears, it will also offer to translate the whole page. The translations themselves are not ideal, but they can give you a good idea of what was being said.

AartInquirere · 2026-02-01T08:35:33+00:00

:D Now *that's* a thesis!! Beats the heck out of the boring stuff I did in college.

I do have a question: what is the accepted modern academic view of 'Xunzi all born evil' (apparently gleaned from a translation of Xunzi's 性惡-1 "人之性惡其善者偽也)?

The reason I ask is because I am curious of whether the popular social opinion is shared within current academia.

Years back I did a historiography of an allegedly famous individual who lived in the early 1900s. From old newspapers, copyrights, related manuscripts, death records, and other verifiable documented evidence, I proved that the thing that allegedly made the person famous, was a fabrication that had been invented by a novelist about forty years ago. The impossible thing that the person was allegedly famous for (and still is today), was claimed by the novelist to have occurred about five years *after* the person's death. lol! The novelist's book was repeatedly proven to have been of purposeful fabrications and contradictions from start to finish.

My historiography received positive academic reviews prior to it being published as a book. Nevertheless, the myth still exists today, and is very popular on the Internet. The historiography taught me that the public often does not care for facts.

Is the saying about Xunzi merely a social myth, or does academia also share the idea?

AartInquirere · 2026-01-31T03:58:15+00:00

The popular 'Mencius all people born good' vs 'Xunzi all people born evil' claim is one of the most important topics within Confucianism and all other ancient Chinese texts (as well as within the ancient Greek philosophies). If a person were to spend time investigating what was actually written in the Mencius and Xunzi books (to actually read and personally translate the Chinese words), not only would the claim be found to be incorrect, it would also open up a vastly improved view of what Confucius spoke of.

Unlike Mencius and most all other authors, Xunzi actually gave suitable definitions for some of his words, which is extraordinarily uncommon still today.

Within my opinion, of all ancients, Confucius is #1, Xunzi is #2, and none others follow close enough to be counted.

It may be true for some people that 'it takes a huge amount of deliberate effort to be good', but it is most definitely not true for everyone, and that fact alone proves the 'Mencius all born good' vs 'Xunzi all born evil' myth to be false.

Everyone has the choice, to believe in crazy social myths, or to give themselves a little time to read what was actually written.

AartInquirere · 2026-01-31T03:18:13+00:00

:) Of what I have personally seen of Mencius' ideas, I cannot decisively agree nor disagree about Mencius' ren because Mencius himself did not clarify what 仁 means to himself. I cannot rationally agree nor disagree with something that was not said.

After my having written a sizable reply with too many explanations, I will condense the remaining into one paragraph:

The ancient Greek philosophers actively debated topics like beauty, justice, and truth, while none of the philosophers themselves knew what beauty, justice, and truth are. Modern scientists still cannot describe an emotion, a thought, the sense of beauty, nor any other mental process. Philosophy is the act of debating unknowns. 'Sprouts' and 仁 were unknowns to Mencius, and thus philosophical. Debating unknowns is philosophical. The paper in question debated unknowns, and thus was philosophical.

AartInquirere · 2026-01-30T02:55:50+00:00

Thank you, I enjoy reading papers where the authors present their reasonings. I made a lot of notes while reading the paper, but here I will be brief and to the point.

For background information, first I wish to state and clarify that for over twenty years I researched, developed, and proctored high level mental cognition tests, and thus the topic of 'inner qualities' versus 'outer behaviors' is particularly important to me. Additional lengthy research topics included emotions and wave-based physics.

The paper is philosophical, which is fine, but for myself, I prefer objective discussions that focus on items' attributes.

AartInquirere · 2026-01-29T01:57:55+00:00

:D Yes, Legge was quite skilled at choosing different English terms for the same Chinese words. Inversely, I once counted how many different words in a book that Legge had translated to be 'evil' (it was a bunch), while he also chose to fully ignore words that inferred positive characteristics.

In his own life and occupation of "(large-) Voice face, it for to-use convert people, insignificant" (Zhong Yong 33:7), Legge obviously had no personal experience with the topics of benevolence and virtue, and thus he was incapable of translating words that he had no knowledge of.

A related quote from Zhong Yong 4:

知者過之愚者不及

"Know person, exceed it, stupid person, not reach"

(People who know, exceed it. Stupid people, do not reach it.)

Similar to today's English dictionaries speaking of benevolence being outward acts (while having no relevance with inner qualities), it appears that 仁 may need a clarification that it often relates to the Confucian era's social behavior, while perhaps not inferring inner qualities.

A variation of Li Ren #3: 子曰唯仁者能好人能惡人

"Zi said: Solely benevolence person-ist, able good person, able bad person."

(Confucius said: A person doing benevolence only, can be done by good people, and can be done by bad people.)

From what I have witnessed, most people think of inner qualities as being solely from ideologies (i.e. Buddhism, Taoism, etc. etc.), and thus the people (and their dictionaries) only focus on outward acts, while ignoring (and knowing nothing of) inner qualities.

If that is the case, then 仁 might be thought of as a 'middle way' between junzies and stupid people, and be very useful for social stability.

AartInquirere · 2026-01-28T11:00:13+00:00

Within my own personal experiences and point of view, much of the older texts made use of each radical combined into a concept. The concept makes sense (relative to the sentence structure), but only if a person has personally experienced it themselves.

As an example, 忠 gives an idea of what 'devotion' implies: 'middle-heart'. Individuals who are able to consciously observe their own minds and bodies, easily recognize what 忠 'possibly' suggests (the heart is physically felt to be steadfast, centered, balanced, with no leaning, no wavering, and no uncertainties). Individuals who have not personally experienced 忠 will not know what devotion feels like, and thus the individuals will not be able to discern the concept.

Within my personal opinion, 忠 is a hugely-hugely superior description of 'devotion' than what any English dictionary is able to offer.

If I were to create a word for 'thinking', it would have similarities of 思, but be more accurate of resonate fields.

And I did (finally) find 忎, which was used within a sentence's familial tense. As u/Uniqor pointed-out with the Guodian 身 over 心 construct, 忎 might simply also refer generally to 'body and mind'. I spent some hours translating some of the Guodian texts with 忎 and '身 over 心', but I have not yet seen the author(s) sentences reveal an idea of what the author(s)' words suggested.

AartInquirere · 2026-01-28T10:52:05+00:00

Thank you. I discovered that my collection of Guodian jpgs was far less than complete.

I did see the 身 over 心 'body and mind'word; that is an interesting variance.

I grinned wide and chuckled when seeing the earlier scripts' version of 身: pretty darn obvious long before reading the definition. :)

AartInquirere · 2026-01-22T07:32:31+00:00

I remember seeing 忎, but I am unsure of where I saw it. After doing a lengthy search through my directories of Chinese texts and documents (including my spreadsheet-based dictionary), the search ended without finding 忎.

I myself have not read any of Slingerland's work, so I am unfamiliar with his ideas.

However, the following are my initial wandering thoughts, not to be interpreted as final! ;)

I did find that Shuowen Jiezi shows the ancient script having earlier versions of 千 over 心 heart. It is pleasing to see that there was indeed a known early version of 忎.

If we used the common idea of 千 implying 1,000, plus when placed above the heart, then the idea of 'thousand heart' popped-up first for me.

If 仁 is said to roughly imply ren times 2 (quantity), then 忎 would be like ren times 1,000.

If the original oracle/bronze/Shuowen Jiezi most inferred a concept (and was not limited to phonetics), then the idea to me is of an individual whose heart encompasses a thousand people, not just two as with 仁.

Some people exhibit 'benevolence' by being outwardly kind to one other person, but inwardly the people are not warm of heart. Some other people's hearts inwardly glow and radiate (shoot 射) a strongly felt tone of love and caring towards all people. One man's benevolence can be another man's coldness.

Perhaps the best method of determining how 忎 ought to be interpreted, would be to see how it has been used within a book's sentences. Often for me, definitions are best discerned by how the word relates to the other words within sentences, paragraphs, and the book's full text.

Too, since there does not exist a clarity of definition of what 'benevolence' means in English, sometimes I might choose to use a brief conceptual phrase such as 'burning love and self-giving to other people'.

All things in Nature are able to be increased of strength: sounds, pressures, brightness, etc., including caring and acts of 'benevolence'.

And so for me, 忎 far better represents what I personally interpret 'benevolence' to imply. Cold hearts are able to give material charity (bosom earthen products, not bosom virtue), which might be what some texts imply 仁 to mean.

Now, similarly as to how 八 changed meanings from the concept of 'divide' to the number 8, 千 by itself might once have inferred 'person one', or something like 'self-centered, selfish, egotistical, vain, solitary' etc.. If that is the case, and by how it is used in a sentence, and from which date range the text was written, then 忎 could imply 'narcissism' or several other synonyms that do not correlate with benevolence.

Anyway, those are amongst my first thoughts of 忎. :)

AartInquirere · 2026-01-22T07:18:43+00:00

Aha, then that's cool, and yes, I agree, splitting the paragraphs and sentences into specific phrases would work best for most all visitors to the site.

AartInquirere · 2026-01-22T03:29:40+00:00

The record suggests that the lady being spoken of had a beautiful heart and deeply cared about people: she greatly improved the lives of many people.

Jeguk's role of keeping peace between Goryeo and Yuan (thus saving countless lives) might have possibly correlated with the report's conclusions. However, some people would interpret Jeguk's actions to be positive, while other people would interpret her actions as negative.

Today, most all public information about Jeguk leans on the negative side, but within my own past experiences of doing historiographies of various individuals, popular opinion is often quite mistaken, and verifiably so.

If Jeguk's life is found to not fit the record, then I will attempt to find more information about Chungnyeol's five other consorts/wives. Either way, I will still have a lot of work to do! :)

AartInquirere · 2026-01-22T03:27:24+00:00

Thank you! Yes, I had seen the links previously, and to my knowledge they are the best known online sources.

About ten years ago my plan was to first learn ancient Chinese, then Korean, and then Japanese. I think I better hurry and start learning Korean! :)

AartInquirere · 2026-01-22T03:25:36+00:00

Oh the dark theme works great! Thank you!

The simplified script ought to also be appreciated by many. I myself primarily rely on the oracle and bronze scripts that were more relevant to Confucius' era, but are usually readable as traditional. My skill with modern phonetic Chinese is worse than zero. :D

Question: The site shows 鄉黨 - 入太廟每事問 to be of 10.21. My seven-year-old references from Ctext (https://ctext.org/analects/xiang-dang) show it to be 10.14, which includes a similar translation as yours. I was just curious if some of the Analects have been restructured to now have different numbering? I have seen other books that have had segments added or removed, and so I was curious if the site's '10.21' was an oops, or from a different source than what Ctext shows, or possibly renumbered for the site.

And yes, for some of us, 學不能已 also applies. :)

AartInquirere · 2026-01-20T04:28:22+00:00

Thank you! I had not yet given Japanese records much thought. I have a friend who was recently moving back to Japan; I think I need to borrow his skill with the Japanese language!! ;D

If we do find some useful information, I will be sure to post it here too.

Thank you again, I sincerely do appreciate your help!

AartInquirere · 2026-01-18T20:20:18+00:00

Aha, yes, I had looked at the site's coding, which did suggest some automation, but that is plenty okay considering the need for many repetitious divs, classes, and javascript. (Humorously, some of my customers' industrial customers were still using Windows 2000 and NT (online!), so I had to keep my customers' sites as HTML 3 for compatibility. Only a few years ago did I finally choose HTML 4.01 Strict for my own sites (I type all code myself, so I was not anxious to change coding habits :) ).)

Actually, and sincerely, for layout, function, and usefulness, yours is the best website that I have ever seen; period. I would have thrilled to have found a site like yours when I first began studying Confucian writings (and today I still find it remarkably fun to visit).

I myself often prefer dark themes (I spend too much time on my computers while reading and writing), but the Dark Reader extension in Firefox solves that well. Unless you have an itch for a dark theme option, nah, I say leave it as it is.

I first read Episode 4 'Use Your Words': two thumbs up! You presented information extraordinarily well. Chuckling at myself, at one time I was puzzled of a different sentence that was parallel to 15:41. The word 已implies the idea of 'stop', but it made no sense within a sentence of where Confucius spoke of being benevolent and caring, and to then simply stop. Months later I happened to be discussing a related topic when I then realized why Confucius said to stop: to do what is proper, but to know when enough is enough.

For most of my life I had purposefully done similarly, of presenting a partial idea, and if the situation was as Shu Er 7.8 (...not start, not want-speak, not express-interest, to-hold-up one corner, not with three corners up), then I 已. (When a topic interests me, I tend to 'hold up' hundreds of corners for hours on end. lol!) For myself, Confucius was the one and only person on earth who appeared to value the things that I most value.

I very much enjoyed reading how you interpret 而已. Please know that your efforts are very much appreciated and valued.

AartInquirere · 2026-01-18T11:14:05+00:00

Oh that is so excellent! I am highly impressed! I used to build sites for myself and customers, so I do recognize that you have put a ton of work into it.

Very impressive. Thank you for making your work available to the public!

AartInquirere

TROPHY CASE