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persed at the point of the sword. Once he was placed in confinement, and himself and disciples even straitened for food. Confucius was now in his sixty-sixth year; and hearing of the death of his wife, he seems to have regarded it as a warning of his own.

He had the misfortune to live in times when men were ambitious, avaricious, and voluptuous; when rebellions, wars, and tumults everywhere prevailed; and though he was fortunate enough to make a vast number of proselytes among the most eminent persons wherever he went, yet he fell into extreme poverty, and was greatly oppressed and persecuted. At length, finding that a public life to him was beset with dangers and trials, he retired to Loo, and in the company of his chosen disciples, employed himself in composing or compiling those celebrated works which have handed down his reputation to posterity, and become the sacred books of China. When seventy years of age, his favourite disciple died. Confucius being greatly concerned for the continuance and propagation of his doctrines, and having entertained great hopes of this person, was inconsolable for his loss, and wept bitterly, exclaiming: Heaven has destroyed-Heaven has destroyed me!' In his seventy-third year, a few days before his death, he moved about, leaning on his staff, and sighed as he exclaimed

• The mountain is crumbling,

The strong beam is yielding,

The sage is withering like a plant.'

He observed to a disciple that the empire had long been in a state of anarchy, and mentioned a dream of the previous night, which he regarded as the presage of his own departure; and so it came to pass, for, after seven days of lethargy, he expired in the year 479 B. C. The eighteenth day of the second moon is kept sacred by the Chinese as the anniversary of their sage's death.

The eyes of the deceased were closed by two of his disciples, who, after putting three pinches of rice into the mouth, arrayed the body in the robes of a minister of state. It was laid, with all the ceremonies so dear to the philosopher when living, in a piece of ground purchased for the purpose to the north of the city; and, to mark the spot, three mounds of earth were raised, and a tree planted, which is said to exist at this day. The disciple who had acted the part of chief mourner extended his period of mourning to six years, residing constantly near the tomb. Crowds came to the place with their families, and erected habitations, till a village arose, which gradually waxed to a city of the third order, called Kea-foo-heen.

Notwithstanding the general demoralisation of his contemporaries, he was no sooner dead than men of all sorts began to venerate his memory. Upon hearing of the event, the king of Loo burst into tears, exclaiming : 'Heaven is displeased with me, since He has taken from me the most precious treasure of my kingdom.' The same sentiments prevailed through all the surrounding countries; which, from that very moment, say the historians, began to honour him as a saint. In the Han dynasty, long subsequent to his death, he was dignified with the highest title of honour; and he was subsequently styled The Sovereign Teacher. Ming, or Chinese dynasty, which succeeded the Mongols, called him The

The

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most holy teacher of ancient times—a title which the present Tartar family has continued.

and

Though only a single descendant (his grandson) survived Confucius, the succession has continued through sixty-seven or sixty-eight generations to the present day, in the very district where their great ancestor was born. Various honours and privileges have always distinguished the family, its heads have enjoyed the rank of nobility. In every city, down to those of the third order, there is a temple dedicated to Confucius. In the most honourable place of this temple,' says D'Avity, is seen his statue, or at least his name, in letters a cubit long. By his side are seen the statues of some of his disciples, whom the Chinese esteem as saints or divinities of a lower rank. All the magistrates of the cities assemble, together with those who are proclaimed bachelors, in each full and new moon in the temple, and offer a kind of adoration to their master with inclinations of the head, and bendings of the knee, and with burning of incense and torches. They also present to him food on his birthday, and at some other periods, thanking him for his doctrines, but neither making a prayer to him nor asking anything from him.' Other writers say that there are no statues to Confucius, but simply tablets with his name. The number of temples dedicated to him in China is stated to be 1560, in which are sacrificed annually 62,000 victims (chiefly pigs and rabbits), besides other offerings. Time has but added to the reputation which he left behind him; and he is now, at the distance of more than two thousand years, held in universal veneration throughout China by all persons, even by those who reject his doctrines.

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Confucius,' says Professor Maurice, ' could not have produced the effect which he has produced upon the empire of China; could not be recognised in the character in which he has been recognised for so many ages, if his mind had not been the very highest type of the Chinese mind; that in which we may read what it was aiming at both before and after he appeared to enlighten it. We may, therefore, acquiesce without difficulty in the opinion, that the Chinese religion was from the first of a much less high and mysterious quality than that of almost any people upon the earth; that the belief of the eternal, as distinct from and opposed to the temporal, existed very dimly and imperfectly in it, and was supplied only by a reverence for the past; that the sense of connection or communion with any invisible powers, though not absent, must have been weak and slightly developed; that the emperor must have been regarded always as the highest utterer of the divine mind; that the priest must have been chiefly valued as a minister of the ceremonial of the court; that rites and ceremonies must have had in this land a substantive value independent of all significance, which they have scarcely ever possessed elsewhere; that there was united with this tendency one which to some may seem incompatible with it—an attachment to whatever is useful and practical; that the Chinese must have entertained a profound respect for family relationships; that the relationship of father and son will, however, have so overshadowed all the rest, that they will have been regarded merely as different forms of it, or as to be sacrificed for the sake of it; that implicit obedience to authority will have been the virtue which every institution existed to enforce, which was to be their only preserver. If we suppose the reverence

for the shades of ancestors, for the person of the emperor, for the dignity of the father, to have been joined with something of a Sabean worship, with some astrology and speculation about the future, we shall perhaps arrive at a tolerably near conception of China as it may have existed under the old emperors, to whom the sage continually refers with admiration and regret.'

These old institutions and this old creed of his country Confucius had studied most profoundly, and was most earnestly desirous to preserve. No one aspired less to be an innovator: his main object was to remove innovations. 'I teach you nothing,' he often repeated, but what you might learn yourselves, if you made a proper use of your faculties. What can be more simple and natural than the principles of that moral code, the maxims of which I inculcate? All I tell you, our ancient sages have practised before us in the remotest times-namely, the observance of the three fundamental laws of relation between sovereign and subject, father and child, husband and wife; and the five capital virtues-namely, universal charity, impartial justice, conformity to ceremonies and established usages, rectitude of heart and mind, and pure sincerity.' 'This,' says Mr Thornton in his laboriously-accurate 'History of China,' to which we have been indebted for various details, 'is à concise summary of the whole moral system of Confucius.' We are told by another writer, that the Confucian theory has preserved its influence because it was precisely adapted to the singularly practical mind of the Chinese: To understand Confucius is to understand China. He had no idiosyncrasy. He was an incarnation of the national character, a mouthpiece of the national feelings; and he was only greater than the rest of his countrymen by being imbued with that genius which gives vitality and energy to thoughts that lie dormant, though existing, in the minds of meaner men. He was the mental light which touches, as Dryden expresses it, "the sleeping images of things;" and at his appearance all became visible that before was obscure, all distinct that before was unintelligible, and the tumultuous ideas of a great nation fell gradually into peace, and order, and harmony. He appealed to no general passions, to no principles that are catholic in man. He allured the intellectual by no metaphysical subtleties, the ignorant by no splendour of imagination, the credulous by no supernatural pretensions: in point of fact, his ethical system, with the exception of the golden rule, "Do unto others as you would they should do unto you," reproduced in Christianity five hundred years later, never soars beyond the most obvious commonplace. Confucius, notwithstanding, was hailed as the Messiah of the Chinese; the national mind rested, as it were, upon his writings; and from that day to this it has never advanced a step beyond them.' A summary view of the original works or compilations which have come down from the age of Confucius and his disciples, will best enable us to form some judgment respecting that school of philosophy and literature of which he was the head, and which constitutes at this day the standard of Chinese orthodoxy. These classical or sacred works consist in all of nine-that is to say, the 'Four Books,' and the 'Five Canonical Works.' In the course of a regular education, the former of these are the first studied and committed to memory, being subsequently followed up by the others; and a complete know

ledge of the whole of them, as well as of the standard notes and criticisms by which they are elucidated, is an indispensable condition towards the attainment of the higher grades of literary and official rank. The original text of these works is comprised within a very moderate compass; but the numerous commentaries which from time to time have been added contribute to swell the whole to a formidable bulk. The art of printing, however, which gives the Chinese such an advantage over other Asiatic nations, together with the extreme cheapness of paper, has contributed to multiply the copies ad infinitum, and to bring these and most other books of the country within the reach of almost everybody.

I. The first of the four books is the 'Ta-heo,' or 'Great Study.' This little work consists of a brief text by Confucius, with an explanation by his disciple Theng-tsen. Though very brief (containing less than two thousand words), it may, in one point of view, be regarded as the most precious of all the writings of our philosopher, as it exhibits in the highest degree the employment of a logical method; which shews that its author, although unacquainted with the profound syllogistic proceedings taught and practised by the Greek and Hindoo philosophers, had at least reduced his philosophy to a scientific state, and was not confined to the aphoristic expression of moral'ideas. The 'Ta-heo' is intended to shew that in the knowledge and government of one's self the economy and government of a family must originate; and going on thence to extend the principle of domestic rule to the administration of a province, it deduces from this last the rules and maxims which should prevail in the ordering of the whole empire. The end and aim of the work is evidently political; and in this instance, as in others, the philosopher and statesman of China commences with morals as the foundation of politics; with the conduct of an individual father in his family as the prototype of a sovereign's sway over his people.

In the sixth section of this work the 'beauty of virtue' is inculcated somewhat in the manner of the Stoics, and its practice recommended as a species of enjoyment. Much wisdom also is shewn in pointing out the importance and utility of rectifying 'the motives of action.' In the tenth section good advice is given to kings and statesmen, as in these sentences: 'He who gains the hearts of the people secures the throne; and he who loses the people's hearts loses the throne.' 'Let those who produce revenue be many, and those who consume it few; let the producers have every facility, and let the consumers practise economy; thus there will be constantly a sufficiency of revenue'-and he might have added, no national debts.

This

II. The second sacred book is the 'Chung-yung,' or 'The Invariable in the Mean.' It is an application of the Greek maxim—ἡ δε μεσοτης εν πασιν arpaλorga, that 'the middle is in all things the safest course.' doctrine of the mean, in the opinion of the Chinese, contains the very essence of all philosophy. It has been thus explained by Professor Maurice Each duty involves another. What is the first duty from which all derive their sanction-the performance of which makes the performance of the others possible? It is difficult to find; often we seem to be moving in a circle. But evidently all duties involve a rule. To be right is to be regular. Irregularity must be the common expression for the

mean.

violation of all relations. But irregularity is clearly the effect of some bias determining us to one side or another. The law of rectitude, then, must be the law of the mean. All study and discipline must be for the preservation of this.' In continuation of this explanation he quotes the following passage from the Chung-yung: 'Before joy, satisfaction, anger, sorrow, have been produced in the soul, the state in which we are found is called the When once they have been produced in the soul, and they have not transgressed certain limits, the state in which we are is called Harmonic. This mean is the great foundation of the world. Harmony is the universal and permanent law of it. When the Mean and the Harmony have been carried to the point of perfection, heaven and earth are in a state of perfect tranquillity, and all beings receive their full development. Confucius said: The man of superior virtue perseveres invariably in the mean; the vulgar or unprincipled man is constantly in opposition to this invariable Few men are there, he cried at another time, who know how to keep long in the right way; I know the reason: cultivated men pass beyond it; ignorant men do not attain it; men of strong virtue go too far; men of feeble virtue stop short.'

mean.

'Here,' continues Mr Maurice, 'we have the very marrow of Chinese life, Chinese morals, Chinese politics. Hence we may explain that passion for minute ceremony which seems to western people so ridiculous and intolerable. Hence it arises that the most affectionate disciples of a man really so honest and simple as Confucius was, should spend whole pages in informing us that if he had to salute persons who presented themselves to him either on the right or the left, his robe behind and before always fell straight and well-arranged; that his step was quickened when he introduced guests, and that he held his arms extended like the wings of a bird; that when he entered under the gate of the palace, he bent his body as if the gate had not been sufficiently high to let him pass; that in passing before the throne, his countenance changed all at once, his step being grave and measured, as if he had fetters on, and his words being as embarrassed as his feet; that, taking his robe with his two hands, he ascended into the hall of the palace, his body bent and holding his breath, as if he had not dared to breathe; that his night-dress was always half as long again as his body; that he never ate meat which was not cut in straight lines; that if a meat had not the sauce which belonged to it, he never touched it: with a thousand other particulars, of which these are fair specimens, and which we willingly omit, lest we should diminish our readers' respect for a really remarkable man, when our intention is only to throw light upon the national character, and to shew how entirely the philosophy of Confucius grew out of it, and was determined by it. That philosophy is not a mere collection of dry formalities: it is based upon a large experience; brings out the idea of duty as it was never brought out in the west till Greek philosophy was remoulded by the Latin mind. It suggests very deep thoughts respecting the connection of social and individual life; it may help us as much by that which it fails to recognise as by that which it actually proclaims. But the blanks which are so significant to us have been filled up in China, as they could only be filled up, by new maxims, a more rigid ceremonial, an intense self-conceit and self-satisfaction. The true Confucian clings to his classical books, learns them by

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