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II. What are the Five Elements?

The designation Wu-hsing goes back to the Shuking and implies that
at these remote times the elements were conceived already as ever active
essences, which again supposes the existence of some sort of a theory
devised to explain the phenomena of nature. In the most ancient description
of the elements contained in the Shuking (cf. above p. 433) they are considered
from the physical point of view as natural substances:—water has
the tendency of descending and soaking other stuffs, fire that of rising and
blazing; wood is characterised as crooked and straight, which seems to
refer to the appearance of the branches of trees; metal is said to be yielding
and changing, which is only true of metal in a liquid state; earth is not
described any further, and its nature found in its generative and productive
power. At all events, the authors of the Classic had not some metaphysical
entities in view, but the substances usually understood by the names:—
water, fire, wood, metal, and earth.

As to the impressions produced by these elements upon our senses
and resulting in the categories of colours, sounds, tastes, and smells, the
Shuking concerns itself with tastes only:—Water becomes salt, fire bitter,
wood sour, metal acrid, and cereals, the produce of earth, sweet. Of
course pure water is not salt, but tasteless, yet, as the commentators remark,
it becomes salt in the ocean, a wrong notion. Fire we would rather
describe as burning than bitter, and wood as bitter instead of sour. The
acrid taste of metals and the sweet one of cereals, such as rice and millet,
may pass. It is difficult now to say which considerations led the ancient
Chinese to attribute just these tastes to the five elements. Since the five
tastes are always given in the series:—salt, bitter, sour, acrid, sweet, it is
not impossible that the ancients merely coupled them with the five elements
of the Shuking in the same order, without any regard to their natural
relations.

In the same superficial manner the five colours:—black, red, green, white,
and yellow may have been connected with the five elements, although the
correspondencies have been explained:—Fire may well be described as red,
though yellow would seem more appropriate. Wood appears green at
least outwardly in plants and trees, whereas inwardly it is mostly white

or yellow. The colours of metals are manifold, only their glittering may
be said to be white. Earth is not yellow in most countries, but it was
so in the loess regions in Honan and Shansi where the Chinese were first
settled. How can water be called black, however, a colour it almost never
shows? It seems to refer to the Yin fluid preponderating in winter, the
time of the element water. Yang is light and sunshine, Yin darkness, Yang,
day-time, and Yin, night. These correspondencies are universally accepted,
but I met with one exception in the `Family Sayings of Confucius' [OMITTED]
[OMITTED][1967] chap. VI p. 1, from which we learn that the Hsia dynasty
reigned by the virtue of metal and of the colours most appreciated black,
the Yin dynasty reigned by water and appreciated white, the Chou by wood
with the red colour. Yao's element was fire, and his colour yellow, Shun's
element earth, and his colour green. These different combinations of elements
and colours show the arbitrariness of the whole scheme. It is impossible
to find one colour for each element, because each embraces many species
with different colours:—Water may appear pellucid, white, green, blue, red,
yellow, grey, black; earth may be black, brown, yellow, red, blue, white,
&c.;[1968] and so different substances burn with different lights. Therefore to
ascribe one colour to each element cannot but be arbitrary.

The Zuñis of North America have no elements,[1969] but they have attributed
certain colours to their seven points of the compass. Their reasons for
doing so are not very convincing either:—The North is yellow, because at
sunrise and sunset the sunlight appears yellow. The West is blue, the
colour of the evening light. The East is white, the colour of day, the
South red, because it is the seat of summer and of the red fire. The
Zenith is multicoloured like the clouds, the Nadir black, and the Centre
has all colours. (Année Sociologique Vol. VI, p. 35 seq.)

Of the Five Smells only burning and fragrant seem to refer to the
corresponding elements fire and earth (cereals). Goatish, rank, and rotten
have nothing to do with wood, metal, and water. They probably apply
to the Five Animals joined to these elements:—the sheep (goat) dog, and pig.

On the principle by which the Five Sounds have been combined with
the elements I am unable to express any opinion.

Kuan Yin Tse[1970] has amplified the statement of the Shuking about the
rising and descending of fire and water:—"That which rises, he says, is

fire; that which descends, water. That which would like to rise, but
cannot, is wood; and that which would like to descend, but cannot, is
metal."[1971] This depicts fairly well the tendency of plants of growing up
and that of metals of sinking down. These tendencies, however, are
restricted and less free than those of fire and water which, endowed with
a greater agility as air and fluid, can follow their propensities and rise
and fall.

The Chang huang t`u-shu pien makes an attempt to distinguish between
the different forms of the elements:—water is level, fire is pointed, earth
round, wood crooked and straight, and metal square.[1972] These are indead the
forms under which these substances often appear to us. Whereas water
shows a level surface, a flame rises and seems pointed. Clods of earth
are more or less round, and ore has often angular and square shapes.
The description of wood as crooked and straight is taken from the Shuking.

It is but natural that the Chinese should have connected their Five
Elements with the two principles of nature established by their old philosophers,
the Yin and Yang, and derived them therefrom. Tung Shung
Shu says in his Ch`un-ch`iu fan-lu XIII, 5 v. that the fluid of Heaven and
Earth united is one. But it splits into Yin and Yang, becomes divided into
the Four Seasons, and separated into the Five Elements.[1973] Yin and Yang,
which we may here translate by cold and heat, are the primogenial essences
from which the Five Elements are produced in the following way:—Water
has its seat in the north which is governed by the Yin fluid. Wood is
placed in the east which is likewise under the sway of the Yin, but the
Yang begins to move already. Fire occupies the south where the Yang
reaches its climax. Metal rests in the west, and is governed by the Yang,
but the Yin begins to stir. Consequently "Fire is Yang, it is noble and
therefore rises; water is Yin, it is mean and therefore goes down; wood
is a scanty Yang, and metal a scanty Yin."[1974] (Pan Ku`s Po-hu-t`ung II, 1.)
The idea is quite clear, if we take into consideration the Four Seasons
with which the elements are combined. In summer ruled by fire, Yang =

heat prevails, in winter ruled by water, Yin = cold. In spring and autumn
when wood and metal are paramount, Yin and Yang, heat and cold fight
together, so that one may speak of a scanty Yang or an incomplete Yin.
The element earth which does not well agree with the Four Seasons is
left out by Pan Ku.

Later authors have gone more into details. Tse Hua Tse (Sung dynasty)
characterises fire as an abundant Yang [OMITTED], and water as an abundant
Yin [OMITTED], wood as a scanty Yang [OMITTED], metal as a scanty Yin [OMITTED],
and earth as sometimes Yin and sometimes Yang.

"The Yang in the Yang is fire, he says, the Yin in the Yin is water,
the Yin in the Yang is wood, the Yang in the Yin is metal. Earth keeps
in the middle between the two essences and thus governs the four quarters:—
in the Yin it is Yin, and in the Yang it is Yang."[1975] (Tse Hua Tse II, 11 v.)

"In the north the extreme Yin resides. It produces cold, and cold
engenders water. In the south the extreme Yang resides, which produces
heat, and heat produces fire. In the east the Yang is set in motion. It
disperses and calls forth wind, which again produces wood. In the west
the Yin stops and gathers. It thus causes dryness, which produces metal.
In the centre the Yin and the Yang mix and produce moisture which
engenders earth."[1976]

In other words fire is considered to be Yang throughout, Yang in
Yang, i. e., an unalloyed Yang; water, a pure and genuine Yin. Wood
is also Yang, but with an admixture of Yin; metal is Yin, but with an
alloy of Yang. Earth may be both.

Chu Hsi and his school take a somewhat different view. They look
upon the Five Elements as created by Heaven and Earth alternately, Heaven
and Earth thus taking the place of the Yin and the Yang. "Heaven first
creates water, Earth secondly creates fire, Heaven thirdly creates wood,
Earth fourthly creates metal."[1977] This idea seems to have originated from
an obscure passage of the Yiking believed to refer to the Five Elements.[1978]

Chu Hsi quotes the famous Su Tung P`o (1036-1101 A.D.) as his authority,
who says that water is the extreme Yin, but it requires Heaven to co-operate
before it can be produced. Yin alone without Yang cannot produce it.
Fire is the extreme Yang, but it likewise requires the co-operation of Earth
to come into existence. And so it is with all the Five Elements, they all
cannot be created, unless the Yin and the Yang are both at work. When
the Yang is added to the Yin, water, wood, and earth come forth, and
when the Yin is added to the Yang, fire and metal are produced.[1979]

About the creation of the elements and their nature Chu Hsi further
asserts that by the joint action of Yin and Yang water and fire are first
produced. Both are fluids flowing, moving, flashing, and burning. Their
bodies are still vague and empty, and they have no fixed shape. Wood
and metal come afterwards. They have a solid body. Water and fire are
produced independently, wood and metal need earth as a substratum from
which they issue.[1980] Heaven and Earth first generate the light and pure
essences, water and fire, afterwards the heavy and turbid ones, wood,
metal and earth. The last is the heaviest of all. As to their density,
water and fire are shapeless and unsubstantial fluids, fire, hot air in the
atmosphere, wood is a soft substance, metal a hard one.

Chou Tse, a predecessor of Chu Hsi, gives still another formula for
the elements:—water is the moist fluid in the Yang, fire, the dry fluid in
the Yin, wood, the moist fluid in the Yang, but expanded, metal, the dry
fluid in the Yin contracted, earth the Yin and the Yang blended and condensed,
so as to become a substance. Yang and Yin, heat and cold are allotted to
the Five Elements in the same manner as by Chu Hsi, but as a secondary
constituent we have moisture and dryness. These are the same principles
from which Aristotle has evolved his Four Elements:—earth, water, fire,
and air. The Chinese have become acquainted with his theory by the
geographical work K`un-yü t`u-shuo [OMITTED] written by the Jesuit
father Verbiest about the end of the 17th century and cited by the
T`u-shu chi-ch`êng. According to the Aristotelian theory dryness and cold
produce earth, moisture and cold produce water, moisture and heat
give air, and dryness and heat give fire.[1981] The result arrived at by

Chou Tse is different, he only composes earth similarly namely by heat and
cold (Yin and Yang). His water consists of moisture and heat (Yang) instead
of cold, and his fire, of dryness and cold (Yin) instead of heat. The
Aristotelian view appears more natural than that of Chou Tse who is under
the spell of the Yiking. Perhaps Tse Hua Tse agrees with the Greek philosopher,
for his above mentioned dictum that fire is the Yang in the Yang,
and water the Yin in the Yin may be understood to mean that fire is dryness
in heat, and water, moisture in the cold, Yang denoting heat as well as
dryness and Yin cold and moisture.