philosophical language the "redistribution of matter and motion")
going on everywhere. That explanation or record was used for purposes
of divination. This dualistic system, by a simple addition, became
a monism, and at the same time furnished the Chinese with a cosmogony.


The Five Elements

The Five Elements or Forces (_wu hsing_)--which, according to
the Chinese, are metal, air, fire, water, and wood--are first
mentioned in Chinese literature in a chapter of the classic _Book
of History_. [8] They play a very important part in Chinese thought:
'elements' meaning generally not so much the actual substances as the
forces essential to human, life. They have to be noticed in passing,
because they were involved in the development of the cosmogonical
ideas which took place in the eleventh and twelfth centuries A.D.



Monism

As their imagination grew, it was natural that the Chinese should
begin to ask themselves what, if the _yang_ and the _yin_ by
their permutations produced, or gave shape to, all things, was it
that produced the _yang_ and the _yin_. When we see traces of this
inquisitive tendency we find ourselves on the borderland of dualism
where the transition is taking place into the realm of monism. But
though there may have been a tendency toward monism in early times, it
was only in the Sung dynasty that the philosophers definitely placed
behind the _yang_ and the _yin_ a First Cause--the Grand Origin,