論清華簡《保訓》之“中”

中國的春秋時代，是人文思想開始興盛的時代。春秋之前的古代社會，經歷過一個長期的巫史時代。儒家思想中的很多重要觀念，都根源於早期的巫史傳統。在儒家文獻中常常會出現一些非常曖昧的語言，往往要從巫史的背景出發，才能得到正確的理解。清華簡《保訓》篇的“中”字，跟“降中”“升中”的原始意義有關，它來源於古代神巫傳統的“通天”思想，是天和人（巫）向對方表明自己意志的中介載體。這是儒家通過改造傳統思想來闡發自己哲學的一個很好的例子。<eng>There had been a witch history before the Spring and Autumn period. The Confucian scholars had a very good talent to ‘translate’ the expressions of witch idea into a Confucian terminology. The word ‘Zhong中’ from the Bamboo Book Baoxun保訓 (collected in Tsinghua University) is such a terminology. It is a kind of media to fulfill the task of communication between people and gods, usually used by those saint kings with witch color.