1. Review of scholarship on the Linghun daoti shuo

Despite the burgeoning interest in the Jesuits’ Chinese-language writings on human nature, the Linghun daoti shuo has been largely neglected, especially in Western scholarship.Footnote ¹⁰ To my knowledge, the only scholars writing in English who have given this text any attention are Paul Rule and Zhang Qiong. For Rule, this text represents a change in Longobardo’s perspective on the translatability of Western concepts in Chinese, insofar as Longobardo employs the term linghun throughout the work to denote the soul without problematizing its suitability as a semantic translation.Footnote ¹¹ In contrast, Zhang Qiong, who has provided the most detailed treatment of the text in any language, has argued conversely that the work is entirely consistent with the methodology suggested in Longobardo’s previous writings, insofar as Longobardo seeks to differentiate rather than accommodate Western and Chinese metaphysical concepts: “Nothing in his Chinese treatise indicates a change of heart, for he in fact did not take the Chinese term linghun as an equivalent of ‘soul,’ nor did he merely intend to expound Catholic teachings on the substance of the soul just for the sake of exposition.”Footnote ¹² Following the methodology proposed in A Brief Response, Zhang Qiong asserts that in the Linghun daoti shuo Longobardo seeks to “rectify the Chinese understanding of the relationship between the soul and the (psycho-physical) universal substance which he believed to have been deeply inscribed into, and represented by, the two Chinese terms linghun and daoti. Thus the treatise epitomized Longobardo’s efforts to transform these two Chinese conceptions into the Catholic-Scholastic notions of “soul” and “prime matter” respectively, and thereby to redefine linghun as a purely spiritual substance which is totally separated from, and superior to, the daoti, or “prime matter” according to his interpretation.”Footnote ¹³

Zhang Qiong’s summary of the treatise is broadly correct, but I disagree with her contention that this work is entirely “consistent” with A Brief Response. In this work, Longobardo did not merely seek to distance Western spiritual concepts from their Chinese analogues but also rejected the very possibility of using semantic translations in Chinese to describe them. Rule correctly observes that in the Linghun daoti shuo there is a clear moderation of this position: nowhere in the Linghun daoti shuo does Longobardo problematize the use of the term linghun, which he assumes to be synonymous with the Western concept of anima. A possible explanation for this moderation can be found in developments in the Terms Controversy: by the early 1630s, Jesuits had overturned the ban on these semantic translations, and Longobardo may have written his treatise on the soul as a compromise solution. By punctiliously delineating the differences between Chinese and Western metaphysics, Longobardo ensures that the use of semantic translations did not imperil doctrinal orthodoxy.

After Zhang Qiong, there have been only a few piecemeal studies on the text by Chinese scholars. Xu Sumin sees the Linghun daoti shuo as emblematizing the contrast between Western spirituality and Western perceptions of Chinese materialism that would inform early modern thinkers such as Malebranche.Footnote ¹⁴ While Xu’s argument is essentially correct, his methodology is problematic insofar as Malebranche would have accessed Longobardo’s thought not through the Linghun daoti shuo but through a French translation of A Brief Response. More recently, Zhang Yunyi and Zhang Chi have sought to present the Linghun daoti shuo as the “first” text of comparative philosophy contrasting Chinese and Western thought, but in so doing they anachronistically claim that A Brief Response was a development of the Linghun daoti shuo, not realizing that the Linghun daoti shuo was published later.Footnote ¹⁵ More egregiously and confusingly, Zhang Yunyi and Zhang Chi suggest that it was Longobardo who introduced the notion of semantic translations of the soul, whereas all previous translations of the soul were phonetic.Footnote ¹⁶ They correctly assert, however, that Longobardo was the first to draw the contrast between linghun and daoti and affirm that Longobardo wrote this treatise to correct the misconception that linghun and daoti were the same thing.Footnote ¹⁷ This affirmation is indeed consistent with what Longobardo states in the preface to the work:

Despite Longobardo’s professed rationale, in my perusal of Chinese Christian literature prior to the publication of the Linghun daoti shuo, I have not found any record of any text comparing or confusing linghun and daoti. Indeed, such a comparison would be surprising, given that, according to their conventional definitions, linghun and daoti represented ontologically incommensurable concepts: the linghun being a created spiritual entity which at most has a likeness with the first principle (namely God) in terms of its spiritual nature and daoti which, from a scholastic-Aristotelian perspective, is more easily associated with the first principle itself.Footnote ¹⁹ Indeed, the lone reference to daoti in earlier Jesuit works is in the Jiren shipian 畸人十篇 (Ten Discourses of the Man of Paradox, 1608). In this immensely successful work, Ricci fashions himself as a jiren 畸人, the quintessential Daoist oddball or “holy fool” of the Zhuangzi who disregards worldly conventions.Footnote ²⁰ Here Ricci presents the daoti positively as the goal to which we should return as part of our restoration of the harmony of self in our preparation for death.Footnote ²¹ But this hapaxlegomenon in Ricci’s works is ill defined, nor is it taken up in later Jesuit writings, which decisively shed the Daoist associations with which Ricci had once flirted.

2. Daoti in Linji Buddhism

A possibility that earlier scholars have not considered is that Longobardo was prompted to write this treatise on daoti in part as a response to anti-Christian polemic led by Buddhist monks and lay scholars. From the beginning of the mission, the Jesuits had engaged in a sustained critique of Buddhism, which was crystallized in Ricci’s Tianzhu shiyi 天主實義 (True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven, 1603). After refuting Buddhist doctrines such as the transmigration of the soul, Ricci attributes to Buddhism the view that the human mind (xin 心) encompassed all things on heaven and earth and was in fact equal to God.Footnote ²² The Buddhist response was inaugurated by Yunqi Zhuhong 雲棲祩宏 (1535–1615), a Pure Land monk from Hangzhou, and intensified in the 1630s at the hands of Miyun Yuanwu 密雲圓悟 (1566–1642) and his disciple Feiyin Tongrong 費隱通容 (1593–1661).Footnote ²³ While primarily motivated by Ricci’s critique of Buddhism, these authors drew freely and eclectically on Confucian and Daoist concepts, so as to defend the integrity of Buddhism as one of the “three teachings” (sanjiao 三教), which, in the syncretic movements of the late Ming, were often regarded as mutually corroborative. A number of these anti-Christian writings can be found in the Poxie ji 破邪集 (Collection of Writings for the Countering of Heterodoxy, 8 juan), which was collated by the lay Buddhist Xu Changzhi 徐昌治 (1582–1672) in 1639 and published in 1640.Footnote ²⁴ With these anti-Christian treatises, Miyun intended not merely to rebuke Christianity but also to goad the Christian missionaries to public debate. In 1635, on multiple occasions he dispatched copies of his essays to the Christian community in Hangzhou, hoping for a response. The Jesuits, however, perhaps mindful of the political persecution in Nanjing following Zhuhong’s critique of Ricci’s Tianzhu shiyi, avoided any direct confrontation.Footnote ²⁵

One of the works published in the eighth juan of this collection was Feiyin Tongrong’s Yuandao pixie shuo, which was first published sometime in the mid-1630s.Footnote ²⁶ This work was an attempt to refute the first four chapters of Ricci’s Tianzhu shiyi, namely Ricci’s exposition of a transcendent Creator God with dominion over all Creation, his critique of Daoist, Buddhist and neo-Confucian theories of the first principle, his treatise on the immortality and unicity of the rational human soul and his refutation of the view that the entire cosmos forms an organic unity (i.e. wanwu yiti). In the first chapter, Feiyin rejects Ricci’s view that God alone is “without beginning and endless”, and argues conversely that the Great Way (dadao 大道) is itself without beginning and is present in all things, including the self. In essence, Feiyin extends the infinity and eternity that Ricci attributes to God alone to the void and all that is encompassed by the void:

The term daoti appears on two occasions in Feiyin’s fourth essay which responds to Ricci’s critique of the Chinese concept of wanwu yiti in Chapter 4 of the Tianzhu shiyi. Feiyin summarizes Ricci’s view as claiming that the Lord of Heaven does not form an organic unity with all things, but that Creator and Creation are substantially distinct. Feiyin counters by arguing that such a view entails the jettisoning of one’s nature and is as absurd as “hairy tortoises and horned rabbit”. If everything is substantially distinct from each other, they would enter into conflict with each other and be unable to return to the daben 大本, which has no beginning nor end. Feiyin contends that this one essence of all things is variously called benxin 本心 (original heart-mind), benxing 本性 (original nature), zhili 至理 (utmost principle), dayi 大義 (supreme justice) and yiqi 一气 (primordial breath), which despite their different names and philosophic contexts, all represent the same principle, while encompassing all phenomena as a single substance. That which unites all these different names is the endowment (bing 禀) of the same daoti 道體. This daben or daoti, Feiyin relates in Buddhist terms, transcends the “delusions of the perceptive mind” (識心妄想) and the differentiation of the phenomenal world:

The casual and surprising use of the term daoti here in a Buddhist context perhaps explains why Longobardo so readily identified daoti with Foxing. However, this term seems to have had little currency in Buddhism. Occasional instances of this term can be found in Buddhist literature. The Foguang Buddhist Dictionary (Foguang dacidian 佛光大辭典) explains the term daoti with reference to the seventh-century text Sifenlü hanzhu jieben shuxing zongji 四分律含注戒本疏行宗記 (Records on the Essentials of Practice for the Four-Part Vinaya) by Daoxuan 道宣 (596–667) where daoti is defined as “the dao without any separate nature, namely the original pure mind” towards which the mind must return after being defiled and from which the “holy way” is born (言道體者, 道無別體, 即本淨心。心隨染緣, 與道相反, 故禁重罪, 還復本淨。無漏聖道由此而生。故云體也). The Foguang Dacidian 佛光大辭典 cites another sixth-century Buddhist text, the Dasheng yizhang 大乘義章 (Essay on the System of Mahayana) by Huiyuan 慧遠 (523–592), which similarly defines the daoti as the “mind of true knowledge” (就心法分別, 真識之心正是道體).Footnote ²⁹

The lack of a substantial distinction between daoti and the original purity of heart-mind (xin 心) in these Buddhist sources may have contributed to Longobardo’s curious decision to conduct a comparative study of daoti and linghun, two disparate concepts that do not seem to admit a ready comparison. Longobardo’s concern is to re-establish the ontological boundaries between the Creator God and the created soul and to reframe the soul’s relationship with God in terms of similarity and likeness (xiaoxiang 肖像), not substantial identity. The argument of the Linghun daoti shuo could be construed as an attempt to demonstrate how conventional Augustinian comparison of the tripartite functions of the soul to the Divine Trinity should not be confused with the Buddhist identification of the mind with the daoti. However, as Longobardo only engages very superficially with his Chinese sources and does not develop a sustained reading of xin 心 (heart-mind), this point is not effectively conveyed and the reader is left somewhat perplexed by the strange terms of comparison.

A further piece of circumstantial evidence can be adduced to corroborate the possibility that both Longobardo or at least his Christian readers understood the Linghun daoti shuo as a response to either Feiyin or another anti-Christian Buddhist treatise composed around the same time. The Juesi lu 覺斯錄 (Record of Enlightenment), a collection of four essays written sometime after 1692 by the Chinese Christian convert Liu Ning 劉凝 (1620–1715?), contains the essay Bian tiantong Miyun heshang sanshuo 辨天童密雲和尚三說, which was written as a critique of the Biantian sanshuo 辯天三說 (1635) by Feiyin’s teacher, the abovementioned Miyun Yuanwu. In this essay, Liu Ning draws freely on Longobardo’s Linghun daoti shuo to argue against what he terms the “Buddhist” error that linghun is the same as daoti:

Naturally, the particular text to which Longobardo was referring cannot be affirmed with certainty. Nonetheless, it is clear that daoti had been used by the Jesuits’ Buddhist opponents and that this may have influenced the polemical premise of Longobardo’s treatise.

3. Daoti in the Confucian, Daoist and neo-Confucian traditions

Despite the Buddhist context in which Longobardo was possibly introduced to daoti, the term had much greater significance in neo-Confucian texts of the Song and Ming dynasties. Recently, Hu Cuie 胡翠娥 and Cheng Yue 程跃 have argued that Longobardo’s equation of this term with Aristotelian prime matter constitutes a gross misreading of the neo-Confucian tradition, insofar as under daoti Zhu Xi subsumes concepts such as taiji, xin, xing, li, taixu and ren which have clear metaphysical and immaterial properties.Footnote ³¹ No doubt, Longobardo’s reading of daoti is tendentious; however, in accusing Longobardo of having “misread”, Hu and Cheng fail to appreciate that Zhu Xi was not Longobardo’s privileged authority for reconstructing neo-Confucian metaphysics. In A Brief Response, Longobardo draws eclectically on Zhu Xi’s predecessors such as Shao Yong 邵雍 (1012–1077) and Zhang Zai 張載 (1020–1077). Similar references can be found in the Linghun daoti shuo. Hence, to understand the merits and limitations of Longobardo’s rereading of this term, it is necessary to trace its Confucian and Daoist origins, as well as the broader attempts by neo-Confucians in the Song and Ming dynasties to develop it into an ontological category.Footnote ³²

Already in pre-Qin literature, there are scattered references to an idea of a substance (ti 體), root (ben 本) or foundation (gen 根) underlying the dao. In Analects 1.2, we find “The superior man attends to the root. When the root has been established, the dao emerges” (君子務本, 本立而道生). This reference to a ben preceding the dao naturally has no metaphysical significance and seems to relate more to the idea of grounding our moral cultivation on fundamental values such as filial piety.

A more metaphysical treatment of this idea of dao as a ben (source) or gen (root) can be found in the “Dazongshi 大宗師” chapter of the Zhuangzi. Here the dao is presented explicitly in terms akin to a first principle preceding the production of all things:

But crucially, unlike the conventional definition of the daoti, the dao here is synonymous with the gen or ben. There is no provision for a substrate of the dao that is ontologically or metaphysically prior. For intimations of such a notion, we must turn to the Xunzi where there is mention of the “substance” (ti 體) of the dao which underlies all its manifestations and changes (夫道者體常而盡變, 一隅不足以舉之).Footnote ³⁴ This underlying substance of the dao accounts for the various equally valid methods for attaining the dao which differ according to one’s concrete circumstances. Nonetheless, the term daoti does not feature as an ontological category, nor is it subject to further discussion in the Xunzi.

According to Zhang Qiong, the first adumbrations of daoti as an ontological category occur in Wang Bi’s (226–249) commentary on the Daodejing 道德經.Footnote ³⁵ One of Wang Bi’s key innovations was his theory of the ti-yong polarity which, in his view, patterns all reality, with ti being like the immutable substratum of a thing and yong being its manifestation or realization. In a passage of this work, Wang Bi applies the ti-yong polarity to draw a contrast between the function or operation (yong 用) of the Dao manifested in its phenomenal transformations and its original unmanifested essence or substance (benti 本體).Footnote ³⁶

Over successive centuries, Daoist thinkers, under the influence of Buddhism, underwent a period of systematization which Livia Kohn has called “Daoist scholasticism”.Footnote ³⁷ Daoist thinkers sought to clarify Daoist teaching through commentaries on Daoist classics, especially the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi. One of the texts that emerged in this period is the Daoti lun 道體論 (The Embodiment of the Dao). The authorship of the treatise is attributed to a Daoist master named Tongxuan Xiansheng 通玄先生, who has been identified variously as Sima Chengzhen 司馬承禎 (647–735), Zhang Guo 張果 or Zhang Jianming 張薦明 (d. 939).Footnote ³⁸ This dialogue is significant because the term daoti not only appears in the title of the work but also serves as the focal point of the author’s discussion of the dao as the underlying cosmic power. The dao is understood as possessing a “double and yet nondual nature”, insofar as its potency and manifestation are “two yet not-two, the same yet different, born yet unborn, nameless yet named”. The dao cannot exist outside of its embodiment in beings, yet beings cannot be embodied without the dao. The multiplicity of things is at once a manifestation of the eternal dao and is gradually distinguished by individual names, which are none other than mental projections to be transcended in the rediscovery of one’s true essence as an integral part of the dao.Footnote ³⁹

The most influential theorist of daoti was Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200). Zhu Xi never clearly defines the term, and in many instances, dao and daoti seem to be used interchangeably to indicate a general principle and natural law.Footnote ⁴⁰ Most conspicuously, however, daoti is used in the title of the first chapter of the Jinsi lu 近思錄 (Reflections on Things at Hand), a textbook on neo-Confucianism that Zhu Xi co-authored with Lü Zuqian 呂祖謙 (1137–1181). Yet here the term’s usage is obscure, and even Zhu Xi himself feared that the contents of the chapter were too abstruse for the beginner student. He suggested to Lü Zuqian on various occasions that the first chapter be replaced, or at the very least that the student read it only after first having read Chapters 2 and 3.Footnote ⁴¹ In this chapter, which explicates Zhu Xi’s views about cosmogenesis originating from the productions of wuji and taiji, daoti seems to serve as a synthesis of neo-Confucian metaphysics, encompassing taiji, xin, xing, li, ren and taixu.Footnote ⁴²

As Jiang Zhenshuo argues, daoti assumes more specific theoretical meanings in Zhu Xi’s commentaries on the Zhongyong and Lunyu. For instance, in Zhu Xi’s commentary on Zhongyong 27, the daoti conveys the sense of the omnipresent, all-encompassing and integral whole which is at once lofty in itself and yet permeates the minutiae of cosmos through the never-ending alternation of yin and yang. Commenting on Lunyu 9.17 (子在川上, 曰: 「逝者如斯夫! 不舍昼夜。」), Zhu Xi follows the Cheng brothers in understanding the ceaseless flow of rivers as emblematic of the perpetual motion of the daoti which plays an active role in the transformations of the cosmos:

Very often the term daoti is used in combination with other words, such as dao zhi ti 道之體 (substance of the Dao), dao zhi benran zhi ti 道之本然之體 (original substance of the Dao), daoti faxian 道體發見 (manifestation of the daoti) and daoti liuxing 道體流行 (motion of the daoti). In these compound formulations, daoti becomes more explicitly integrated into the theory of ti-yong which Zhu Xi ultimately inherited from Wang Bi. Zhu Xi distinguished two modes of existence: the metaphysical composed of the universal principle li in itself (xingershang 形而上, i.e. that which is above form) and the concrete (xingerxia 形而下, i.e. that which is below form). According to this division, daoti is related to li, whereas its phenomenal manifestations pertain to the concrete. Zhang Qiong asserts that Zhu Xi understood this relationship in two ways. First, the ti serves to indicate a universal principle of things, whereas yong indicates its manifold and diverse manifestations. For instance, there is only one principle of people, whereas each person has his or her own distinct individuality.Footnote ⁴⁴ Second, ti serves to indicate potential (weifa 未發) innate principles and virtues which are embodied and actualized (yifa 已發) as yong. Potential are the virtues of ren, yi, li and zhi that are within us, and they are actualized through our daily activities.Footnote ⁴⁵

However, for Zhu Xi, daoti can be understood both in relation to ti and to yong. Whereas the metaphysical dao has no visible body, it is made visible through the movements of the cosmos (such as the flow of rivers). That which has “no sound or smell” (無聲無臭) is the incorporeal and invisible ti of the dao, while its ceaseless operations are its manifestations (daoti faxian). Hence although Zhu Xi is at pains to demarcate the bounds between the ti and the yong of the daoti, he concludes that the two are inseparably linked, and the ti of the dao can only be known through the observation of the yong.Footnote ⁴⁶ Thus there is no absolute division between the spiritual and concrete realms in both Zhu Xi’s thought more generally and more specifically in his conceptualization of the daoti.

In contrast, for Zhang Zai 張載 (1022–77), the leading exponent of Qi Learning (qixue 氣學) taixu 太虛 (Great Vacuity) is the most fundamental principle of the cosmos.Footnote ⁴⁷ In the Zhengmeng 正蒙, Zhang Zai rebuts Buddhist and Daoist accounts of emptiness by insisting that taixu is not an absence but is always filled with amorphous qi.Footnote ⁴⁸ While taixu and qi are not coterminous, they cannot exist apart from each other. Amid the constant corruptions and transformations of things with physical form, only taixu is enduring and immovable.Footnote ⁴⁹ Through the operation of yin and yang, the qi condenses (juqi 聚氣) or disperses (youqi 遊氣) in an endless cycle of movement, agitation and coagulation.

In the Ming dynasty, Zhang Zai’s theories about taixu 太虛 were revived by Wang Tingxiang 王廷相 (1474–1544).Footnote ⁵⁰ In his Shenyan 慎言 (Prudent Words), Wang proposes daoti as the highest philosophical category, encompassing both qi in its original form and its transformation into myriad things. For Wang, daoti exists eternally without beginning or end and thus there was no stage in the development of the cosmos where there was merely nothing. In its original state, it is an amorphous yuanqi which possesses latently the “primordial impulse” (yuanji 元機) that brings about the creation (zaohua 造化) of all things:

Wang Tingxiang positions his theory of daoti as a direct critique of Zhu Xi’s conception of taiji. Whereas for Zhu Xi taiji functions as a principal equivalent to li, for Wang Tingxiang taiji can only be understood in relation to the infinite transformative potential of primordial qi. To posit that taiji is not subject to qi would limit the universality of qi as a principle. In the same vein, he rejects the account of cosmogenesis presented in the Liezi which maintained the priority of supreme simplicity (taiyi 太易) before qi, reasserting his view that prior to the formation of Heaven and Earth there was but taixu within which qi was inherently present. Similarly, as the primordial impulse inherent to qi already contains the latent potential for movement and activity, li does not exist outside qi nor does it have any role in the generation of qi (理載於氣, 非能始氣也). In Wang Tingxiang’s mind, even xing 性 (nature) is produced by qi and the temperament of an individual is purely a function of the composition of his or her qi. Thus Mencius’s views about the innate goodness of nature are erroneous, as is Zhu Xi’s identification of xing with li.Footnote ⁵²

4. Longobardo’s scholastic-Aristotelian reading of daoti

It is difficult to state with precision the sources used by Longobardo to construct his synthesis of daoti as a metaphysical concept in the Chinese philosophic tradition. The categorization of Longobardo’s interpretive frame is further complicated by his decisively Western metaphysical assumptions: daoti is defined as Aristotelian prime matter through an antithetical comparison with the Western concept of the soul. From the outset, Longobardo assumes the truth of Christian and scholastic-Aristotelian definitions and concepts. “Spiritual” (神者) is defined as something that does not pertain to matter or form (不着氣質, 不着色相); intellect (明者) is presented as the distinguishing characteristic of the rational soul; substance (體者) is defined as “something real which independently exists” (確然獨立自存, 不涉虛幻也) and God is assumed to be author of all things, before whom nothing exists (天主造之始有, 先時無有也). When defining daoti more specifically, Longobardo applies similar vocabulary and assumptions: the ti in the daoti is subsistent (自存自立), real (不空不無) and immortal (永遠不滅) – expressions that do not appear in any prior definition of the daoti. In clarifying what he means by daoti as pre-existing all things (造先莫先), Longobardo states that there was nothing before the Creation of all things by God, and afterwards began the division of all the different forms (天主造于萬相之先, 先此者無一物, 後此而始分萬形萬相也). Evidently, Longobardo’s target audience was Christian, as these assumptions would not have been accepted by an unsympathetic Chinese reader.

Just as in A Brief Response, in the Linghun daoti shuo Longobardo employs a highly eclectic approach to his synthesis of Chinese philosophy, indiscriminately assimilating diverse patterns of thought, such as that of Zhang Zai, Shao Yong and Zhu Xi. On a few of occasions, Longobardo includes direct citations from sources, including the Zhuangzi, Shao Yong’s Wuminggong zhuan 無名公傳 (Biography of Mr. No-Name), the Lunyu and Francesco Sambiasi’s Lingyan lishao 靈言蠡勺 (Spoonfuls of Discourse on the Rational Soul), but mostly his definitions and phraseology seem to be a free paraphrase or even original composition. The definition of daoti with which Longobardo’s treatise opens is emblematic of this eclecticism: whereas the soul is defined as a spiritual substance that is created in time yet is eternal and a form (timo 體模), daoti, on the other hand:

The terminology used here to define daoti appears to draw, consciously or, more likely, unconsciously, on multiple sources. The expression youti wuwei 有體無為 has a strong Daoist flavour, echoing texts such as the Zhuangzi (Dazongshi 3) where the dao is defined as “it does nothing and has no bodily form” (無為無形). The very expression youti wuwei appears in the Tang-dynasty Daoist text Daode zhenjing guang shengyi 道德真經廣聖義 (Extended Sacred Interpretations of the Daodejing) by the Taoist priest Du Guangting 杜光庭 (850–933), notably too in relation to daoti.Footnote ⁵⁴ Yet some of the other language found here is decisively Buddhist: benwu xinyi 本無心意 and benwu sexiang 本無色相 are both technical expressions that appear in Buddhist literature: xinyi being used to indicate mental perceptual functions or mind (translating the Sanskrit manas), and sexiang 色相 used to indicate external manifestation or appearance (translating the Sanskrit rūpa).

Similar ideas had already been discussed in A Brief Response to describe the Chinese understanding of spirits in general, as well as of taiji and li. In Prelude 11, Longobardo argues that heaven and earth are understood as purely natural forces that are completely devoid of agency: “Thirdly, because heaven and earth, as written in Book 26 of the Xingli (pages 16 and 17), have no heart at all. That is, they have no will, no deliberation, but everything operates through a certain natural inclination just as fire burns and a stone falls downwards.”Footnote ⁵⁵ Indeed, in juan 26 of the Xingli daquan 性理大全, the Ming-dynasty encyclopedia of neo-Confucianism from which Longobardo derived most of his understanding of neo-Confucianism, we can find similar definitions of li and taiqi as “without intention, reason or creative action” (無情意、無計度、無造作). Yet this thesis of the Chinese concept of the first principle as mindless, passive and pervasive in all things did not originate with Longobardo’s independent reading of the Xingli daquan: already in the Japanese Catechism (1586) by the Jesuit visitor Alessandro Valignano (1539–1606) we find similar tropes about the Japanese concept of the first principle.Footnote ⁵⁶ It appears that in composing the Linghun daoti shuo, Longobardo retranslates these ideas already canvassed in his earlier writings, but with more ecumenical language of the daoti that can speak more effectively to the eclecticism of the late Ming.

Longobardo’s attempt to “retranslate” statements about other metaphysical concepts as references to the daoti can be more easily demonstrated with passages where his sources can be more clearly identified. On three occasions, Longobardo notes that daoti should be understood as the guzi 骨子 (inner part) of all things. In the first instance of this term, he employs this metaphor to compare the relationship of the daoti to things with the soul’s role as a spiritual substance (shenti 神體): just as the soul is the spiritual substance on which depends the possibility of the afterlife, so the destruction of the daoti would entail the destruction of all things dependent on it.Footnote ⁵⁷Guzi is a technical term that is frequently used in Zhu Xi’s writings to indicate a constitutive element of a thing and is also used in the Zhuzi yulei to describe the significance of ti in relation to the dao.Footnote ⁵⁸ Yet in depicting the universality of this guzi in all things, Longobardo lists examples such as the ant (louyi 螻蟻) and grass (tibai 稊稗), both examples cited in the Zhibeiyou (Knowledge Rambling in the North) chapter of the Zhuangzi to illustrate the universality of the dao. The Zhibeiyou is significant for understanding the sources of the daoti in the Daoist tradition as it includes discussion on the impenetrability of the dao even among those “who embody it” (體道者). Longobardo cites directly from the ensuing discussion between the personifications of Grand Purity (Taiqing 泰清), Infinitude (Wuqiong 無窮), Do-Nothing (Wuwei 無為) and No-Beginning (Wushi 無始), slightly abbreviating the words of Do-Nothing: “[It may be considered] noble or mean; bound or dispersed; these are the figures of the dao” (可貴可賤、可約可散, 道之數也).Footnote ⁵⁹ Longobardo’s selective citation changes the message of the passage quite significantly: in the Zhuangzi, Do-Nothing’s words form part of a series of contradictory statements serving to illustrate the ineffability of the dao. Longobardo, in the search for clear definitions and eschewing apophaticism with scholastic confidence, ignores this context and reframes the citation as a positive affirmation of the daoti’s omnipresence. In linking Zhu Xi and the Zhuangzi, Longobardo shows his desire to construct a more general conceptual study of the daoti that is not bound to particular thinkers or schools of thought.

A more egregious example of textual manipulation through selective citation can be found in Longobardo’s use of Shao Yong’s Wuminggong zhuan. After explaining the inseparability of daoti from things (道體寄于物, 不能離物而獨立), Longobardo adduces Shao Yong as an authority: “It borrows your visage and body, coming and going at its own pleasure” (借爾面貌, 假爾形骸, 閒往閒來).Footnote ⁶⁰ This phrase comes originally from Shao Yong’s poem, Zizuo zhenzan 自作真贊 (Praise of Self-Perfection), in which Shao Yong lyrically compares his self-perfection to the uprightness (caoxing 操行) of the pines and osmanthus and the grace (wencai 文才) of orioles and flowers. In this supreme state, Shao Yong’s visage and body are “borrowed” in the sense that he has transcended and is no longer bound to his own exterior form. The lines cited by Longobardo can also be found in Shao Yong’s Wuminggong zhuan with some accompanying philosophic commentary. Longobardo may have come across this citation in juan 13 of the Xingli daquan, which reproduces the Wuminggong zhuan in full.

Strangely and significantly, Longobardo elides the third four-character verse from the citation: “He plays with the ball and has surplus leisure” (弄丸余暇). Nongwan, literally “juggling” or “playing catch”, is mentioned in the Zhuangzi to demonstrate the superiority of inaction over action. In the commentary of the Wuminggong zhuan, the nongwan of Shao Yong’s poem is identified with taiji, which is described immediately above as “the creator of all things, and Heaven and earth” (能造萬物者, 天地也。能造天地者, 太極也).Footnote ⁶¹ Under the assumption that the taiji is the neo-Confucian appellation for the daoti, Longobardo transposes the conventional reading of the passage, a shift that is made more plausible through textual omission of the nongwan verse. Longobardo takes the equivalence one step further: the daoti implied by this passage can be likened to what the Daoists call yingning 櫻寧, this state of peacefulness unaffected by external things mentioned in the Zhuangzi, or what the Buddhists call Weimo 維摩 (Vimalakīrti), the ideal bodhisattva with a spotless reputation who was said to have visited China.

The eccentric ease with which Longobardo moves between disparate concepts and schools of thought might suggest that his reconstruction of the daoti is at times philologically and textually incoherent. Furthermore, the strict materialism with which he defines the daoti ill accords with any received definition of the term. Yet the resonance in Longobardo’s materialist interpretation of daoti with the revival of Qixue in the Late Ming is inescapable. Longobardo was well aware of Zhang Zai, citing him on several occasions in A Brief Response to argue that references to spirits in Chinese texts were none other than metaphors for the potency and natural activity of qi, which operates through the cycle of yin yang.Footnote ⁶² In the Linghun daoti shuo, however, Longobardo makes no mention of Zhang Zai, but by making daoti the privileged term for denoting the first principle in Chinese thought, he evokes the daoti of Zhang Zai’s successor, Wang Tingxiang.

Like Wang Tingxiang, Longobardo sees daoti as something concrete and real, with the latent potential for the generation of all things. Longobardo shares Wang Tingxiang’s conviction that taiji and taixu are equivalent names for daoti, just emphasizing different attributes of the same thing, the former its limitlessness and the latter its lack of particular form. For both Longobardo and Wang Tingxiang, daoti and matter are inseparable from and mutually dependent on each other.Footnote ⁶³ The fact that Wang Tingxiang’s daoti lacks beginning and end would have likely reminded Longobardo of Aristotle’s prime matter, which according to the classical understanding was uncreated and indestructible. But even here Longobardo marks his distance from Wang Tingxiang: daoti for Longobardo is not qi, rather it is replete with those things that have form and qi.Footnote ⁶⁴ Even yuanqi, which is mentioned as one of the names for the first principle in A Brief Response, is passed over despite its importance for Wang Tingxiang.Footnote ⁶⁵ Instead of qi, Longobardo prefers to stress the relationship between daoti and wu 物 (things). This more neutral term, devoid of metaphysical baggage, allowed Longobardo to project more plausibly his materialist reading of Chinese philosophy and also emphatically signals that his definition of daoti, however much inspired by intellectual movements in the late Ming, was his own unique creation and not identifiable or reducible to any particular precedent in the Chinese intellectual tradition.