Part 2

Another charge not infrequently heard is one of a certain repellent coldness of temperament and stiffness of demeanour. The warrant for such a statement is not so readily forthcoming, unless indeed it is to be found in the stiff and repellent style which characterises some translations of his sayings. In the Analects we are told the exact opposite of this. The Master, we read there, was uniformly cheerful in demeanour, and he evidently unbent to quite an unusual extent with his disciples, considering the respect and deference universally shown to age and learning in China. Is it at all conceivable that a man of cold and unlovable temper should have attracted round him hundreds of disciples, with many of whom he was on terms of most intimate intercourse, meeting them not only in the lecture-room, as modern professors meet their classes, but living with them, eating, drinking, sleeping and conversing with them, until all their idiosyncrasies, good or bad, were better known to him than to their own parents? Is it explicable, except on the ground of deep personal affection, that he should have been followed into exile by a faithful band of disciples, not one of whom is known ever to have deserted or turned against him? Is coldness to be predicated of the man who in his old age, for once losing something of his habitual self-control, wept passionately for the death of his dearly loved disciple Yen Hui, and would not be comforted?

But it has been reserved for the latest English translator of the Analects, the Rev. Mr. Jennings, to level some of the worst charges at his head. To begin with, he approvingly quotes, as Legge's final opinion on Confucius, words occurring in the earliest edition of the Chinese Classics to the effect that he is "unable to regard him as a great man," quite heedless of the fact that the following stands in the edition of 1893 (two years before his own translation appeared): "But I must now leave the sage. I hope I have not done him injustice; the more I have studied his character and opinions, the more highly have I come to regard him. _He was a very great man_, and his influence has been on the whole a great benefit to the Chinese, while his teachings suggest important lessons to ourselves who profess to belong to the school of Christ." This summing-up, though certainly unexpected in view of much that has gone before, does partly atone for the unjust strictures which Dr. Legge felt it necessary to pass on Confucius at an earlier period, though it may require many years entirely to obliterate their effect. What I wish to emphasise at present, however, is the unfairness of quoting an early and presumably crude and ill-considered opinion in preference to the latest and maturest judgment of an authority who at no time can be said to err On the side of over-partiality for his subject.

But this is not all. For after pointing out, truly enough, that Confucius cannot well be blamed for "giving no impulse to religion," inasmuch as he never pretended to make this his aim, Mr. Jennings goes on to pick some holes on his own account, and incontinently falls into exactly the same error that he had previously rebuked in Dr. Legge. "In his _reserve_ about great and important matters, while professing to teach men, he is perhaps most to blame, and in his holding back what was best in the religion of the ancients." What these great and important matters were, is not made very clear, but if, as seems probable, the phrase is simply another way of referring to "the religion of the ancients," it can only be repeated that religion was a subject which he disliked to discuss and certainly did not profess to teach, as is plainly indicated in the Analects. And the reason why he refrained from descanting on such matters was that, knowing nothing of them himself, he felt that he would have been guilty of hypocrisy and fraud had he made a show of instructing others therein. Would that a like candour distinguished some of our own professed teachers of religion!

The last accusation against Confucius is the most reckless of all. "There is," according to Mr. Jennings, "a certain _selfishness_ in his teaching, which had the effect of making those who came under his influence soon feel themselves great and self-satisfied." As only the feeblest of evidence is produced to support this wild statement, it will not be necessary to consider it at any length, though we may ask in passing whether Yen Hui, the disciple who profited most from his Master's teaching and best exemplified it, is depicted as exhibiting this alleged self-satisfaction in a peculiarly noticeable degree. For an answer to this question the reader may be referred to Tsêng Tzŭ's remarks on p. 128.

The truth is, though missionaries and other zealots have long attempted to obscure the fact, that the moral teaching of Confucius is absolutely the purest and least open to the charge of selfishness of any in the world. Its principles are neither utilitarian on the one hand nor religious on the other, that is to say, it is not based on the expectation of profit or happiness to be gained either in this world or in the next (though Confucius doubtless believed that well-being would as a general rule accompany virtuous conduct). "Virtue for virtue's sake" is the maxim which, if not enunciated by him in so many words, was evidently the corner-stone of his ethics and the mainspring of his own career. Not that he would have quite understood the modern formula, or that the idea of virtue being practised for anything but its own sake would ever have occurred to his mind. Virtue resting on anything but its own basis would not have seemed to him virtue in the true sense at all, but simply another name for prudence, foresight, or cunning. Yet material advantage, disguised as much as you will, but still material advantage in one form or another, is what impels most men to espouse any particular form of religion. Hence it is nothing less than a standing miracle that Confucianism, which makes no promise of blessings to be enjoyed in this life or the next, should have succeeded without the adjunct of other supernatural elements than that of ancestor-worship. Even this was accepted by Confucius as a harmless prevailing custom rather than enjoined by him as an essential part of his doctrine. Unlike Christianity and Mahometanism, the Way preached by the Chinese sage knows neither the sanction of punishment nor the stimulus of reward in an after-life. Even Buddhism holds out the hope of Nirvana to the pure of heart, and preaches the long torment of successive rebirths to those who fall short of perfect goodness. No great religion is devoid of elevated precepts, or has ever failed to mould numbers of beautiful characters to attest the presence of something good and great within it. But in every case the element of supernaturalism, which is of course inseparable from a religion properly so called, introduces a new motive for men's actions and makes it no longer possible for virtue to be followed purely for its own sake, without thought of a hereafter. Thus, if we assent to Comte's famous law of the Three States, Confucianism really represents a more advanced stage of civilisation than biblical Christianity. Indeed, as Mr. Carey Hall has recently pointed out in an article on the subject, Confucius may be regarded as the true fore-runner runner of Comte in his positivist mode of thought.

His whole system is based on nothing more nor less than the knowledge of human nature. The instincts of man are social and therefore fundamentally good, while egoism is at bottom an artificial product and evil. Hence the insistence on altruism which we find in the sayings of Confucius, the injunction to "act socially," to live for others in living for oneself. The most important word in the Confucian vocabulary is _jên_, which in the following extracts is translated "virtue" only for want of a better term. Our English word "virtue" has so many different shades of meaning and is withal so vague, that in using it, the idea of altruism is often hardly present to our mind. But in _jên_ the implication of "social good" emerges much more distinctly. Its connotation has no doubt extended gradually until it seems often to be rather a compendium of all goodness than any one virtue in particular. But this development only means that the word is following in the track of the thing itself. For let a man be but thoroughly imbued with the altruistic spirit, and he may be termed "good" without qualification, since all other virtues tend to flow from unselfishness.

The Confucian theory of man's social obligations rests first and foremost on the fact that he forms part of a great social machine--an aggregation of units, each of which is called a family. The family, in Chinese eyes, is a microcosm of the Empire, or rather, since the family is chronologically prior to the State, it is the pattern on which the greater organism has moulded itself. The feudal system under which Confucius lived naturally accentuated the likeness. The Emperor had, in theory at least, paternal authority over his feudal princes, who in turn, standing to one another in the relation of elder and younger brothers, were regarded as the fathers of their respective peoples. Now, the way to ensure that a machine as a whole may run smoothly and well, is to see that each part shall fulfil its own function in proper subordination to the rest. How is this result achieved in the family? Obviously through the controlling will of the father, who has supreme authority over all the other members. But this authority is not by any means the mere brute force of a tyrant. It is based firstly on the natural order of things, whereby the father is clearly intended to be the protector of his children; and secondly, as a consequence of this, on the love and respect which will normally spring up in the minds of the children for their protector. Such is the genesis of filial piety, which plays so large a part in Chinese ethics. It is quite untrue, however, to say with Mr. Jennings, that no corresponding parental duties are recognised by Confucius, as the following anecdote may serve to show. During the sage's short period of office as Minister of Crime, a father came to him bringing some serious charge against his son. Confucius kept them both in prison for three months, without making any difference in favour of the father, and then let them go. The Minister Chi Huan remonstrated with him for this, and reminded him of his saying, that filial duty was the first thing to be insisted on. "What hinders you now from putting this unfilial son to death as an example to all the people?" Confucius' reply was, that the father had never taught his son to be filial, and that therefore the guilt really rested with him.

For the harmonious working of a family, then, we need respect for authority on one side, and self-sacrifice on the other. The father's object must be entirely altruistic--the good of his family. Then only will he be doing his duty as a father, just as a son is not doing his duty unless he shows honour and obedience to his parents. The all-important element which makes possible the working of the family machine, the lubricating oil that eases the bearings, is not merely filial piety without any corresponding feeling on the part of the parent, but rather a certain subtle principle of harmony and self-control permeating every member of the family group, which restrains egoistic propensities and promotes the common good. This is the Chinese term _li_, which in this sense of a quality of the soul is hardly translatable by any single word or combination of words, but is certainly not to be rendered by any such atrocious phrase as "the rules of propriety."[3] Now Confucius saw that the same general principles which govern the family are applicable also to that greatest of families, the State. Here we have the Emperor, in whose hands the supreme authority must lie, exercising functions exactly analogous to those of the father of a family. But if his is the supreme authority, his must also be the supreme responsibility. Veneration and respect are his due, but only because he identifies himself with the good of the people. In public affairs, just as in the home, there must be that same principle of harmony to regulate the relations of governor and governed, otherwise the machine will not work. There must be _li_ here as well, but as it is not possible for the sovereign to maintain with his subjects the personal intimacy which unites a father and his sons, it is necessary to fall back upon symbols, and to give outward and visible expression to the inward sentiments of loyalty and respect which should animate the breast of each member of the nation. These symbols are the rites and ceremonies of which Confucius was considered such a past-master. He saw indeed their full importance as symbols, but he also knew that, divorced from the inward feeling, they were meaningless and without value. In this way it is easy to see how the word _li_, as a human attribute, acquired its various shades of meaning, from the harmony in the soul which prompts action in accordance with true natural instincts, down to ordinary politeness and good manners--also an indispensable lubricant in the lesser dealings of life between man and man.

It was in the family again that Confucius found a natural force at work which he thought might be utilised as an immense incentive to virtue. This was the universal human proneness to imitation. Knowing that personal example is the most effective way in which a father can teach his sons what is right, he unhesitatingly attributed the same powerful influence to the personal conduct of the sovereign, and went so far as to declare that if the ruler was personally upright, his subjects would do their duty unbidden; if he was not upright, they would not obey, whatever his bidding. "The virtue of the prince," he said, "is like unto wind; that of the people, like unto grass. For it is the nature of grass to bend when the wind blows upon it." It must be admitted that Confucius has in this particular somewhat overshot the mark and formed too sanguine an estimate of the force of example. It would be unfair, however, to base our argument on the analogy of modern democratic states, where the controlling power is split up into several branches, and the conspicuousness of the monarch is much diminished. Not that even the constitutional sovereign of to-day may not wield a very decided influence in morals. But this influence was much greater while the king retained full despotic power, and greatest of all in feudal times, when the successive gradations of rank and the nice arrangement of a hierarchy of officials, each accountable to the one above him, were specially designed to convey and filter it among all classes of the community. Had Confucius been able to find a prince who would have acted consistently on Confucian principles, the results might have been almost as grand as he anticipated. The experiment was tried, we must remember, on a small scale, when Confucius himself became governor of a town in the State of Lu. And although one must be chary of accepting all the extravagant tales which gathered round his brief official career, it seems indisputable that this political theory, unlike many others, proved reasonably successful in actual practice.

Of course the weak point is that every king cannot be a Confucius, and unless some practical method can be devised of electing rulers on the ground of merit alone, it is impossible to ensure that their conduct shall serve as a pattern to their people. "Rotten wood cannot be carved," the Master himself once remarked, and he found bitter confirmation of his saying in Duke Ting of Lu. Nothing could ever have been made out of such utterly weak and worthless material. And he afterwards spent thirteen years of his life in the fruitless search for a sovereign who would correspond even faintly to his ideal. Such unswerving devotion to the abstract cause of right and justice and good government cannot but puzzle those who have been taught to regard Confucius as the very type and embodiment of materialistic wisdom and practical utilitarianism. But in truth, strange though it may sound, he was a great idealist who gained his hold on his countrymen by virtue rather of his noble imaginings and lofty aspirations than of any immediate results or tangible achievements. By the men of his own day he was more often than not considered a charlatan and an impostor. It is remarkable that even the two Taoist recluses and the eccentric Chieh Yü (p. 122) should have condemned him as a visionary and a "crank." Similar was the impression he made on the gate-keeper who asked a disciple if his Master was the man "who was always trying to do what he knew to be impossible." This playful sarcasm is really the best commentary on his career, and one that pays him unintentionally the greatest honour. Though often disheartened by the long and bitter struggle against adverse circumstance and the powers of evil, he never gave over in disgust. Therein lay his greatness. "Wer immer strebend sich bemüht, Den können wir erlösen," sing the angels in _Faust_, and no man ever toiled for the good of his fellow-creatures with greater perseverance or with less apparent prospect of success. In this, the truest sense, he could say that his whole life had been a prayer (p. 87). He succeeded in that he seemed to fail. He never achieved the Utopian object of reforming all mankind by means of a wise and good sovereign. On the contrary, after his death confusion grew worse confounded, and the din of arms rose to a pitch from which it did not subside until after the momentous revolution which swept away the Chou dynasty and established a new order of things in China. In a radically individualistic and liberty-loving country like China, the feudal system was bound sooner or later to perish, even as it perished in a later day among ourselves. But throughout the anarchy of that terrible period, the light kindled by Confucius burned steadily and prepared men's minds for better things. His ideal of government was not forgotten, his sayings were treasured like gold in the minds of the people. Above all, his own example shone like a glorious beacon, darting its rays through the night of misery and oppression and civil strife which in his lifetime he had striven so earnestly to remove. And so it came about that his belief in the political value of personal goodness was in some sort justified after all; for the great and inspiriting pattern which he sought in vain among the princes of his time was to be afforded in the end by no other than himself--the "throneless king," who is for ever enshrined in the hearts of his countrymen. It is absurd, then, to speak of his life as a failure. Measured by results--the almost incalculably great and far-reaching consequences which followed tardily but irresistibly after he was gone--his life was one of the most successful ever lived by man. Three others, and only three, are comparable to it in world-wide influence: Gautama's self-sacrificing sojourn among men, the stormy career of the Arab Prophet, and the "sinless years" which found their close on Golgotha.

[1] See p. 121.

[2] See p. 118.

[3] See note on p. 60.

LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL DISCIPLES

The proper names occurring in the Analects present some difficulty to the European reader, as one and the same person is often referred to in several different ways--by his surname and personal name, by his "style," or by a combination of the two, while among intimates the personal name only is employed. Mr. Ku has on this account eliminated almost all proper names from his translation, using a periphrasis instead. But by this method one misses much of the characterisation which is such an attractive feature of the Analects. I have judged it better to give the names of the principal disciples exactly as they appear in the Chinese, and to provide a table of their various appellations for easy reference. An asterisk denotes the name most frequently used.

Surname and Style. Mixed Appellation. Personal Name.

Yen Hui Tzŭ Yüan Yen Yüan.* Min Sun } Tzŭ Ch‘ien Min Tzŭ-ch‘ien,* (Min Tzŭ)} Jan Kêng Po Niu* Jan Po-niu. Jan Yung Chung Kung* Jan Ch‘iu Tzŭ Yu Jan Yu.* Chung Yu Tzŭ Lu*} Chi Lu } Tsai Yü Tzŭ Wo Tsai Wo.* Tuan-mu Tz‘ŭ Tzŭ Kung* Yen Yen Tzŭ Yŭ* Yen Yu. Pu Shang Tzŭ Hsia* Chuan-sun Shih Tzŭ Chang* Tsêng Shên } Tzŭ Yŭ (Tsêng Tzŭ*)} Fan Hsü Tzŭ Ch‘ih Fan Ch‘ih.* Ssŭ-ma Kêng Tzŭ Niu Ssŭ-ma Niu.* Kung-hsi Ch‘ih Tzŭ Hua Kung-hsi Hua.* Yu Jo } Tzŭ Jo (Yu Tzŭ*)}

GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS

The Master said: In ruling a country of a thousand chariots there should be scrupulous attention to business, honesty, economy, charity, and employment of the people at the proper season.

A virtuous ruler is like the Pole-star, which keeps its place, while all the other stars do homage to it.

People despotically governed and kept in order by punishments may avoid infraction of the law, but they will lose their moral sense. People virtuously governed and kept in order by the inner law of self-control will retain their moral sense, and moreover become good.

Duke Ai[1] asked, saying: What must I do that my people may be contented?--Confucius replied: Promote the upright and dismiss all evil-doers, and the people will be contented. Promote the evil-doers and dismiss the upright, and the people will be discontented.

Chi K‘ang Tzu[2] asked by what means he might cause his people to be respectful and loyal, and encourage them in the path of virtue. The Master replied: Conduct yourself towards them with dignity, and you will earn their respect; be a good son and a kind prince, and you will find them loyal; promote the deserving and instruct those who fall short, and they will be encouraged to follow the path of virtue.

Some one, addressing Confucius, said: Why, Sir, do you take no part in the government?--The Master replied: What does the Book of History say about filial piety?--Do your duty as a son and as a brother, and these qualities will make themselves felt in the government. This, then, really amounts to taking part in the government. Holding office need not be considered essential.

The people can be made to follow a certain path, but they cannot be made to know the reason why.

Tzu Kung asked for a definition of good government. The Master replied: It consists in providing enough food to eat, in keeping enough soldiers to guard the State, and in winning the confidence of the people.--And if one of these three things had to be sacrificed, which should go first?--The Master replied: Sacrifice the soldiers.--And if of the two remaining things one had to be sacrificed, which should it be?--The Master said: Let it be the food. From the beginning, men have always had to die. But without the confidence of the people no government can stand at all.