Chinese Han Dynasty Silver Box with Cosmogram

Thinking Through Henri Bergson (1859-1941)’s “Creative Evolution”

• Essence: Silver as Temporal Resonator of the Dao

The Han Dynasty silver box bearing a cosmogram is more than a decorative object—it is a metallic mnemonic of the Dao, forged at the intersection of formless origin and temporal differentiation. Through the lens of Henri Bergson’s metaphysics, it becomes an ontological instrument—embodying duration (durée) rather than fixed space.

The silver surface reflects not only light but philosophical fluidity. Unlike gold’s association with solar permanence, silver in Daoist alchemical symbolism resonates with lunar qualities—the receptive, adaptive, and rhythmic. It embodies the return, the yin of all becoming. Engraved with a cosmogram—often showing heaven (天), earth (地), and man (人) in harmonious triad—it maps the world not as a fixed structure, but as a pattern of dynamic co-arising.

Bergson writes of intuition as that which grasps the indivisibility of real movement. Likewise, the cosmogram is not a mere symbol; it’s a temporal circuit, a diagram of becoming. It does not point to an outside metaphysics but compresses metaphysics into the object itself. The silver box is thus a portable center of time—its circularity suggests not the closure of thought but the looping of return: seasons, breaths, dynastic cycles, and inner transformation.

In Daoist internal alchemy (內丹術), the transformation of body and spirit mirrors the refinement of metals. Silver’s natural reflectivity becomes metaphor: know thyself through mirroring the world’s rhythms. To hold this box is to participate in duration—not through thought, but through attunement.

Thus, the box is not passive. It activates. It is the spiritual pivot of a culture that understood reality as undivided flow. From Bergson’s perspective, it is an object made not to freeze time, but to conduct its resonances—to act as a vessel through which life’s deeper rhythm hums quietly through the ages.