Even while Yin looked and wondered, in great fear, a rolling voice,
coming from one who sat in the midst of all, holding in his right hand
the sun, and in his left the moon, sounded forth, like the music of
many brass instruments playing in unison. It was the First Man who
spoke.
"Yin, son of Yat Huang, and creature of the Lower Part," he said,
"listen well to the words I speak, for brief is the span of your
tarrying in the Upper Air, nor will the utterance I now give forth
ever come unto your ears again, either on the earth, or when, blindly
groping in the Middle Distance, your spirit takes its nightly flight.
They who are gathered around, and whose voices I speak, bid me say
this: Although immeasurably above you in all matters, both of
knowledge and of power, yet we greet you as one who is
well-intentioned, and inspired with honourable ambition. Had you been
content to entreat and despair, as did all the feeble and incapable
ones whose white bones formed your pathway, your ultimate fate would
have in no wise differed from theirs. But inasmuch as you held
yourself valiantly, and, being taken, raised an instinctive hand in
return, you have been chosen; for the day to mute submission has, for
the time or for ever, passed away, and the hour is when China shall be
saved, not by supplication, but by the spear.
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