Abstract

Hsuen-Tzu, the great ancient Chinese philosopher and the progenitor of the ethical view that men are born evil, saw the human spirit as being linked to the heaven(the nature and differentiated two components of the human spirit namely the emotions representing the man's affective life and the senses representing the intellectual life of human being. There are six affects: like, dislike, happiness, anger, sadness, and joy and five senses visual, auditory, olfactory, taste. and tactile, and it is the mind which controls and holds in balance the emotions and the sense. It is through these five senses that people perceive the world, and they are related to volition as well. The innate part of the human psyche is called disposition. As opposed to the disposition, which Heuen-Tzu considers is natural, the acquired part is called habit and is supposed to be artificaal. The substance of the disposition is emotion which, when aroused, becomes desire. Emotions by nature are blind, but since intellect comes to join emotion when the latter is aroused, human acts become deliberate acts. If a man acts according to the emotion, the act becomes ringed with desires, and he may become aggressive and even violent. The disposition is evil, and therefore it will be false and artificial if someone presents it as if it is good. It happens that it is within man's power to acquire falsehood. Man also can bring into various states, viz, it can be emptied, centered, of be made to stand still. To possess this ability is to be in the state of the Great Clarity. When man reaches this state, he begins to see for the first time the true nature of things and events.