Individual Autonomy and Responsibility in Late Imperial China By ...

efficacy of their morality. This belief is certainly not Confucian, but by combining Confucian morality with Dao-Buddhist beliefs, the novel states that “the great good can change the disaster into good fortune, and the great evil to change the good fortune into disaster (天下事非大善不能轉禍為福，非大惡亦不能轉福為禍).¹⁹⁰ The discussion between the two main characters, the merchant Lin and the scholar Duo, solves the apparent contradiction between the fatalistic previous statement and the individual’s ability to control one’s destiny. Lin asks:

I heard someone say that tigers and leopards eat people, but depending on how a person conducted themselves in their previous lives, they might not get eaten by the wild beasts when they encounter them. What do you think? ¹⁹¹

Duo disagrees and argues that usually tigers and leopards dare not eat men because they feed on animals. If they eat a man, this is always because he is similar to a beast, and they were not able to distinguish him from other animals. Humans are distinguished by the endowment of a miraculous light (lingguang 靈光) together with their innate goodness (tianliang 天良) that can be partially or totally lost according to their moral or immoral behavior. Lin then counters that he had a relative, who was extremely good, a vegetarian and Buddhist devotee, but one day, while he was climbing a mountain on a pilgrimage together with friends, he was devoured by a tiger. How was it possible that such a pious man did not have the miraculous light to prevent this? For Duo, such men are only externally respectable, but in actuality they secretly conceal immorality because no virtuous man would suffer such disasters.

An analogous question is raised later in the novel, but this time the suffering of the virtuous man is not excluded, and the explanation is different, on the basis of the Confucian distinction between moral behavior and good or bad fate. Moreover, the possibility of heroic death to preserve one’s dignity is maintained. The conversation between Little Spring (the niece of the Old Duo) and a Daoist nun goes as follows: