ABSTRACT
From “Taixi renshen shuogai xu” 泰西人身說概序 (Preface to An Abbreviated Treatise from the West on the Human Body), collected in Ming Qing jian Yesu huishi yizhu tiyao 明清間耶穌會士譯著提要 (Summary of the Publications by the Jesuits during the Ming and the Qing), Volume 7
(c. 1643)
After heaven and earth became separate, their transforming and nourishing powers brought into existence human kind. Since then, humans are mentioned together with heaven and earth. Yet it is the consensus of all involved in the study of first principles that, when humans look at heaven from the earth, the contrast between heaven and humans is so immense that there is no way humans can be mentioned together with the immeasurable heaven and earth.
