Chapter Six, The Third Image: Profit and Harvest Summary and Analysis

The reception hall contains two warriors and a huihui; Ricci chooses the Chinese character li for his next image, which means profit. Again, he divides the ideograph down the middle with two new ideographs, one for "grain" and the other for "blade" or "knife." The memory image is of "a farmer holding a sickle, ready to cut the crops in the field." There is more to this image, as one might expect. The word "li" can sometimes be formulated as "ly" and "ly" has many meanings, allowing Ricci to use different meanings in different contexts. He is able to illustrate various Christian lessons with the symbol. Ricci also uses "Ly" as a Romanization of his own name. The northwest corner of the reception hall to the left...