These sources describe a precarious world, saturated with unruly and
unpredictable spiritual powers. Above there was Shang Di

The majority of oracular and bronze vessel inscriptions record attempts
by the ruling members of Shang and Zhou society to influence the spirits
through ritual supplication and sacrifice. Those appeals that are directed
specifically at ancestral spirits are among the clearest early expressions of
"ancestor worship" and, given our concern with the development of phi-
losophy, it is interesting that even at this early stage we find an explicit con-
cern with the inner life of the worshipper. For they make clear that sacrifice
was not simply an external behavior; in order for one's sacrifice to be ac-
cepted by the appropriate spirit, one had to offer it with the proper inner
attitudes and feelings of respect and reverence. Moreover, it was thought
that with enough effort of the right sorts, one could cultivate the appro-
priate attitudes and feelings.

In early Chinese religious thought, ancestral spirits bridge what in other
traditions often looms as an abyss between the spiritual and human worlds.
There is no fundamental metaphysical rupture in the cosmos; at the very
least, living human beings have concerned representatives in the spiritual
world who can temper and appeal to more remote and recalcitrant forces.
This gives early and even later Chinese religious thought a distinctively
"this-worldly" orientation, and it had a profound influence on the shape
and style of later philosophical reflection.

Another fascinating and productive aspect of this complex of beliefs, at-
titudes, and practices is the attention early diviners paid to keeping track of
their past interactions with the spiritual world. Shang diviners kept exten-
sive records of their oracular activities, and these often included notes con-
cerning the results they obtained by following the advice derived through
divination. K. C. Chang argues ⁴ that they did so in the belief that, by
studying these past records, thoughtful individuals could discern the most
reliable patterns of productive human-spirit interaction. He further sug-

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