| The origin of Chinese legal thought is not the same as the west one. Without concept and logic, the early Chinese thinkers achieved understanding of law through observing, imagining and contemplating “water”. It was water that created the primitive image of Chinese legal thought. As the base of concept system, “water” was not a literary analogy, but a metaphor of law. There is a close relationship between “to rule” pursued by Chinese traditional political and legal thought and “to control water by Great Yu”. To bring water under control was also a trial to provide regulations for human behaviors. Moreover, the significance of criterion to rule people is the same as it to rule water. Chinese ancestors also realized that water itself can be the image of criterion through observing and imagining “still water”. Therefore there is a kind of relationship structure between water and criterion which is an important concept in Chinese culture. Through such imaginary and poetry observation of water, Chinese ancestors have established a special structure between water and law.Chinese philosophers also established the primitive model of Chinese political and legal relationship directly or indirectly through contemplating the characteristics and attributes of water. The analogy of “water and boat”, that is, water can bear boat, and can also swallow it up, was the earliest model of ruler and his people in Chinese political and legal thought. It admonishes the ruler and his people to confront with such relationship of mutual dependence: the ruler should not disregard the appetites of his people, and the people should also comply with the rule of wise emperor. To pay attention to such relationship is an important mark of the wisdom of the ruler.The concrete imago of water provided model for the establishment of the concept of law in ancient China, and was internalized in the thought and conceptual system of law in China. Such metaphor is one of the orientations of conceptual schemes in the eyes of philosophers. |
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