Cheng Hao and his younger brother Cheng Yi formulated some of the foundational concepts of Neo-Confucian (Daoxue) philosophy and are usually credited as its co-founders. After Cheng Hao’s death, Cheng Yi claimed that his brother—not Han Yu (see source 3.1) or any other preceding thinker—was the first man since Mencius who had fully understood the Way of the Sages. The Cheng brothers’ oral teachings were recorded by their disciples and compiled into the Chengshi yishu (The Surviving Writings of the Cheng Brothers) and the Chengshi cuiyan (Select Sayings of the Cheng Brothers).

To Han Yu’s narrative of the loss and rediscovery of the Way of the Sages, the Cheng brothers added an emphasis on the conceptual duality of li 理 (principle¹) and qi—the former concept originating in Chinese Buddhist philosophy and the latter in Warring States cosmological thought. The Cheng brothers believed that there was a single, innately moral li governing the universe, but it was manifested in many variations due to the differing distributions and purities of yin and yang qi in both animate beings and inanimate things. In two of the passages below, we see Cheng Hao asserting that barbarian qi is inherently imbalanced and thus fundamentally different from human (i.e., Chinese) qi. In another passage, Cheng Yi argues that differences in qi are a function of geography and manifest themselves in physical differences among human beings.

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From the Chengshi yishu (The Surviving Writings of the Cheng Brothers)

The principle (li) of equilibrium (zhongyong) is perfect. Nothing that is purely yin can come into existence; nor can anything that is purely yang come into existence. When yin and yang are out of balance, then one is born an animal or a barbarian (Yi-Di); when they are in equilibrium, one is born a human being.

[Translator’s note: This passage is one of relatively few oral teachings attributed specifically to Cheng Hao. Like Han Yu’s “Yuanren” (see source 3.1), Cheng Hao seems to have treated “human being” as a category that properly applied only to the Chinese, barbarians being a separate class of being that was neither human nor animal.]

…

Human beings and animals differ only in the balance of their qi. Nothing that is purely yin can come into being; nor can anything that is purely yang come into existence. Those that receive an imbalance of yin and yang are animals, plants, and barbarians (Yi-Di); those that receive the correct balance of qi are human beings.

[Translator’s note: This passage is attributed generally to the Cheng brothers but is probably a variant of the quote attributed to Cheng Hao above.]

…

If one lacks ritual propriety just once, one becomes a barbarian; if one lacks it again, then one becomes an animal. The sage [Confucius] was afraid that human beings would turn into animals, so his method of writing the Annals was extremely careful and rigorous. If the Central Lands [rulers] used barbarian rites, then [Confucius] regarded them as barbarians.² When Han Yu said that the Annals was careful and rigorous³, he deeply understood [Confucius’s] intent. One cannot do without knowing Han Yu’s way.

[Translator’s note: This is an oral teaching recorded in 1079 and quoted in the Chengshi yishu. It is not specifically attributed to Cheng Yi, but a shorter version of the same argument is attributed to him in the same text. We see here an ethnocentric moralist reading of Han Yu’s use of “barbarizing” demotion in the Annals to attack Buddhism. The target of attack is now ritual impropriety in general, not Buddhism in particular, and the rhetoric of moral barbarization is combined with that of moral bestialization.]

…

The qi of heaven and earth manifests differently based on geographical distance. From this we can know that the further away [the qi] is, the more different it will be from ours, to the point of even human bodies being different. That is hardly surprising! For example, historical records mention the Ghost Country and the Dog Country. There are indeed hundreds of such strange types (zhong 種), but essentially the principle (li) [behind their strangeness] is the same.

[Translator’s note: This passage probably quotes Cheng Yi. It is an attempt at rationalizing differences in human physical appearance, and even the purported existence of monstrous peoples, in terms of qi. This seemingly contradicts Cheng Hao’s claim that only the Chinese can be considered human because of their balanced qi, although the reference to “human bodies” (renxing 人形) need not indicate that Cheng Yi believed all peoples were equally human. The Ghost Country (Guiguo 鬼國) and the Dog Country (Gouguo 狗國) are described in the historical texts Tang huiyao (Tang State Compendium) and Xin Wudaishi (New History of the Five Dynasties) respectively. These lands were probably in the region corresponding to eastern Siberia and Kamchatka, and were known to the Chinese only through legends transmitted by envoys from neighboring peoples. The people of the Ghost Country are described as follows:

“The people of this country go out at night and hide in the daytime. Their eyes, noses, and ears are like those of the people of the Central Lands, but their mouths are on the crowns of their heads. Their soil does not grow rice or millet; instead, they eat deer and snakes.”

The people of the Dog Country are described as follows:

“They have the bodies of human beings and the heads of dogs. They have long fur and wear no clothes. They fight fierce animals with their bare hands and their language is the barking of dogs. Their wives are human and can speak the Han (Chinese) language. The sons that [the wives] bear are dogs, while the daughters are human, and [the dog-men and human-women] intermarry. [The dog-men] live in caves and eat raw meat, while their wives and daughters eat like human beings.”

For pre-modern Chinese beliefs about monstrous peoples, see also source 4.1a.]

From the Chengshi cuiyan (Select Sayings of the Cheng Brothers)

Liu Anshi asked how one can [use history to] predict what will happen in the next hundred generations.⁴ The Master (Cheng Yi) said, “Judging from history after the Three Dynasties (Xia, Shang, and Zhou), the Qin fell because it went against the Way and governed tyrannically. The Han then rose and promoted moral charisma and classical learning, using the previous dynasty’s errors as a mirror. [The Han dynasty’s] scholars and ministers may not have understood the Way, but few of them turned against principle to an extreme. Thus, in the time of the usurper Wang Mang, many scholars maintained their integrity and died to honor their moral duty [to the Han]. Shizu (Emperor Guangwu of Eastern Han) rose and quite naturally esteemed [these martyrs]. Over time, the obsession with integrity became a grim burden, and men became fearless of death without understanding the need for moderation in ritual propriety and moral duty. Thus, the literati of the Wei and Jin changed and became unrestrained, wanton, and flippant. The proper boundaries of human relations collapsed, and everyone turned into a barbarian. The result of such behavior was the five Hu (barbarian) peoples bringing disorder to the Hua.⁵ When yin has reached its peak, yang will emerge to balance it out; when disorder has reached its peak, order will begin to return. The Sui therefore cleared away [the disorder of barbarian rule], and the Tang unified [north and south]. This is an immutable principle. But the Tang dynasty did not maintain the three bonds (of ruler-subject, father-son, and husband-wife) properly, starting from Taizong.⁶ … To the end of the Tang, the barbarians repeatedly posed a threat to the Central Lands and military governors defied the imperial court. The Tang finally fell as a result of these problems, and they reached an extreme in the Five Dynasties. This was all due to human failings.”

[Translator’s note: A similar passage is recorded in the Chengshi yishu but describes the Wei-Jin literati as “no different from barbarians” and the Tang imperial clan as “practicing barbarian ways” in violating the three bonds. Both versions present an ethnocentric moralist reading of history, which was unusual for Cheng Yi’s time but became popular among Southern Song Neo-Confucians. Besides claiming that the ethos of each dynasty was an over-correction to that of the previous regime, Cheng Yi also argues that the Western Jin and Tang made themselves vulnerable to barbarian revolts or invasions because their elites behaved immorally and thus effectively became barbarians themselves.]

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1. Alternatively translated as “pattern” or “coherence.” ↩︎
2. This paraphrases a sentence from Han Yu’s “Yuandao”; see source 3.1. ↩︎
3. This is a reference to Han Yu’s essay “Jinxue jie” (An Explication of Advancement in Learning), which characterizes the Annals as “careful and rigorous.” ↩︎
4. Liu Anshi was one of Cheng Yi’s disciples. Here he alludes to a claim made by Confucius in Analects 2.23. ↩︎
5. The long period of “barbarian” states in the north after the collapse of the Western Jin. ↩︎
6. This refers to Taizong killing two of his brothers (including the heir apparent) in a coup (fratricide), forcing his father to abdicate the throne to him (unfilial behavior), and taking the widow of one of the slain brothers as a concubine (incest). The next line (omitted here) goes on to cite later examples of Tang princes rebelling against their father or elder brother, and Tang emperors taking their stepmother or daughter-in-law as a concubine. ↩︎