XI. CONFUCIUS THE HERO
He had done enough in the way of holding office and governing states. Laotse had taught that of old time, before Tao was lost, the Yellow Emperor sat on his throne and all the world was governed without knowing it. Confucius worked out the doctrine thus: True government is by example; given the true ruler, and he will have the means of ruling at his disposal, and they will be altogether different from physical force. 'Example' does not covey it either: his thought was much deeper. There is a word li—I get all this from Dr. Lionel Giles—which the egregious have been egregiously translating 'the rules of propriety'; but which Confucius used primarily for a state of harmony within the soul, which should enable beneficent forces from the Infinite to flow through into the outer world;—whereof a result would also be, on the social plane, perfect courtesy and politeness, these the most outward expression of it. On these too Confucius insisted which is the very worst you can say about him.—Now, the ruler stands between Gods and men; let his li be perfect—let the forces of heaven flow through him unimpeded,—and the people are regenerated day by day: the government is by regeneration. Here lies the secret of all his insistence on loyalty and filial piety: the regeneration of society is dependent on the maintenance of the natural relation between the Ruler who rules— that is, lets the li of heaven flow through him—and his people. They are to maintain such an attitude towards him as will enable them to receive the li. In the family, he is the father; in the state, he is the king. In very truth, this is the Doctrine of the Golden Age, and proof of the profound occult wisdom of Confucius: even the (comparatively) little of it that was ever made practical lifted China to the grand height she has held. It is hinted at in the Bhagavad-Gita:—"whatsoever is practised by the most excellent men"; again, it is the Aryan doctrine of the Guruparampara Chain. The whole idea is so remote from modern practice and theory that it must seem to the west utopian, even absurd; but we have Asoka's reign in India, and Confucius's Ministry in Lu, to prove its basic truth. During that Ministry he had flashed the picture of such a ruler on to the screen of time: and it was enough. China could never forget.
But if, knowing it to have been enough,—knowing that the hour of the Open Door had passed, and that he should never see success again,—he had then and there retired into private life, content to teach his disciples and leave the stubborn world to save or damn itself:—enough it would not have been. He had flashed the picture on to the screen of time, but it would have faded. Twenty years of wandering, of indomitability, of disappointment and of ignoring defeat and failure, lay before him: in which to make his creation, not a momentary picture, but a carving in jade and granite and adamant. It is not the ever-victorious and successful that we take into the adyta of our hearts. It is the poignancy of heroism still heroism in defeat,—
"unchanged, though fallen on evil years,"
—that wins admittance there. Someone sneered at Confucius, in his latter years, as the man who was always trying to do the impossible. He was; and the sneerer had no idea what high tribute he was paying him. It is because he was that: the hero, the flaming idealist: that his figure shines out so clear and splendidly. His outer attempts—to make a Man of Marquis This or Duke That, and a model state of Lu or Wei—these were but carvings in rotten wood, foredoomed to quick failure. All the material of the world was rotten wood: he might have learned that lesson;—only there are lessons that Such a One never learns. Well; we in turn may learn a lesson from him: applicable now. The rotten wood crumbled under his hands time and again: under his bodily hands;—but it made no difference to him. He went on and on, still hoping to begin his life's work, and never recognising failure; and by reason and virtue of that, the hands of his spirit were carving, not in rotten wood, but in precious jade and adamant spiritual, to endure forever. On those inner planes he was building up his Raja-Yoga; which time saw to it should materialize and redeem his race presently. Confucius in the brief moment of his victory illuminated the world indeed; but Confucius in the long years of his defeat has bowed the hearts of twenty-five centuries of the Black-haired People. We can see this now; I wonder did he see it then? I mean, had that certain knowledge and clear vision in his conscious mind, that was possessed in the divinity of his Soul—as it is in every Soul. I imagine not; for in his last days he—the personality— could give way and weep over the utter failure of his efforts. One loves him the more for it: one thinks his grandeur only the more grand. It is a very human and at last a very pathetic figure—this Man that did save his people.
Due west from Lu, and on the road thence to Honanfu the Chow capital, lay the Duchy of Wei; whither now he turned his steps. He had no narrow patriotism: if his own Lu rejected him, he might still save this foreign state, and through it, perhaps, All the Chinas. He was at this time one of the most famous men alive; and his first experience in Wei might have been thought to augur well. On the frontier he was met by messengers from a local Wei official, begging for their master an interview:— "Every illustrious stranger has granted me one; let me not ask it of you, Sir, in vain." Confucius complied; was conducted to the yamen, and went in, leaving his disciples outside. To these the magistrate came out, while the Master was still resting within.—"Sirs," said he, "never grieve for your Teacher's fall from office. His work is but now to begin. These many years the empire has been in perilous case; but now Heaven has raised up Confucius, its tocsin to call the people to awakenment."—A wise man, that Wei official!
At the capital, Duke Ling received him with all honor, and at once assigned him a pension equal to the salary he had been paid as Minister of Crime in Lu. He even consulted him now and again; but reserved to himself liberty to neglect the advice asked for. However, the courtiers intrigued; and before the year was out, Confucius had taken to his wanderings again: he would try the state of Ch'in now, in the far south-east. "If any prince would employ me," said he, "within a twelvemonth I should have done something considerable; in three years the government would be perfect."
He was to pass through the town of Kwang, in Sung; it had lately been raided by a robber named Yang Hu, in face and figure resembling himself. Someone who saw him in the street put it abroad that Yang Hu was in the town, and followed him to the house he had taken for the night. Before long a mob had gathered, intent on vengeance. The situation was dangerous; the mob in no mood to hear reason;—and as to that, Yang Hu also would have said that he was not the man they took him for,—very likely would have claimed to be the renowned Confucius. The disciples, as well they might be, were alarmed: the prospect was, short shrift for the whole party.—"Boys," said the Master, "do you think Heaven entrusted the Cause of Truth to me, to let me be harmed by the towns-men of Kwang? "—The besiegers looked for protests, and then for a fight. What they did not look for was to hear someone inside singing to a lute;—it was that great musician Confucius. When he sang and played you stopped to listen; and so did the Kwang mob now. They listened, and wondered, and enjoyed their free concert; then made reasonable inquiries, and apologies,—and went their ways in peace.
In those South-eastern states there was no prospect for him, and after a while he returneci to Wei. He liked Duke Ling personally, and the liking was mutual; time and again he went back there, hoping against hope that something might be done,—or seeing no other horizon so hopeful. Now Ling had a consort of some irregular kind: Nantse, famed for her beauty and brilliance and wickedness. Perhaps ennuyee, and hoping for contact with a mind equal to her own, she was much stirred by the news of Confucius' return, and sent to him asking an interview. Such a request was a characteristic flouting of the conventions on her part; for him to grant it would be much more so on his. But he did grant it; and they conversed, after the custom of the time, with a screen between, neither seeing the other. Tse Lu was much disturbed; considering it all a very dangerous innovation, inconsistent in Confucius, and improper. So in the eyes of the world it would have seemed. But Nantse held the Duke, and Confucius might influence Nantse. He never let conventions stand in his way, when there was a chance of doing good work by breaking them.
One suspects that the lady wished to make her vices respectable by giving them a seeming backing by incarnate virtue; and that to this end she brought about the sequel. Duke Ling was to make a Progress through the city; and requested Confucius to follow his carriage in another. He did so; not knowing that Nantse had seen to it that she was to be sitting at the Duke's side. Her position and reputation even in those days needed some regularizing; and she had chosen this means to do it. But to the people, the spectacle was highly symbolic; and Confucius heard their jeers as he passed:—Flaunting Vice in front, Slighted Virtue in the rear.—"I have met none," said he, "who loves virtue more than women." It was time for him to go; and now he would try the south again. In reality, perhaps, it matter little whither he went or where he stayed: there was no place for him anywhere. All that was important was, that he should keep up the effort.
An official in Sung, one Hwan Tuy, held the roads against him, accusing him of "a proud air and many desires; an insinuating habit and a wild will." From this time on he was subject to persecution. The "insinuating habit" reminds one of an old parrot-cry one has heard: "She hypnotizes them." He turned westward from this opposition, and visited one state, and then another; in neither was there any disposition to use him. He had found no more likely material than Duke Ling of Wei, who at least was always glad to see and talk with him:—might not be jade to carve, but was the wood least rotten at hand. But at Wei, as usual, there was nothing but disappointment in store.
Pih Hsih, a rebel, was holding a town in Tsin, modern Shansi, against the king of that state; and now sent messengers inviting Confucius to visit him. Tse Lu protested: had he not always preached obedience to the Powers that Were, and that the True Gentleman did not associate with rebels?—"Am I a bitter gourd," said Confucius, "to be hung up out of the way of being eaten?" He was always big enough to be inconsistent. He had come to see that the Powers that Were were hopeless, and was for catching at any straw. But something delayed his setting out; and when he reached the Yellow River, news came of the execution of Tsin of two men whom he admired. "How beautiful they were!" said he; "how beautiful they were! This river is not more majestic! And I was not there to save them!"
The truth seems to be that he would set out for any place where the smallest opening presented itself; and while that opening existed, would not be turned aside from his purpose; but if it vanished, or if something better came in sight, he would turn and follow that. Thus he did not go on into Tsin when he heard of these executions; but one, when he was on the road to Wei and a band of roughs waylaid him and made him promise never to go there again, he simply gave the promise and went straight on.
At Wei now Duke Ling was really inclined to use him;—but as his military adviser. It was the last straw; he left, and would not return in Ling's lifetime. He was in Ch'in for awhile; and then for three years at Ts'ae, a new state built of the rebellion of certain subjects or vassals of the great sourthern kingdom of Ts'u. On hearing of his arrival, the Duke of Ts'ae had the idea to send for Tse Lu, who had a broad reputation of his own as a brave and practical man, and to inquire of him what kind of man the master really was. But Tse Lu, as we have seen, was rigid as to rebels, and vouchsafed no answer.—"You might have told him," said Confucius, "that I am simply one who forgets his food in the pursuit of wisdom, and his sorrows in the joys of attaining it, and who does not perceive old age coming on."
Missionary writers have cast it at him, that were of old he had preached against rebellion, now he was willing enough to "have rebels for his patrons";—"adversity had not stiffened his back, but had made him pliable." Which shows how blind such minds are to real greatness. "They have nothing to draw with, and this well is deep." He sought no "patrons," now or at another time; but tools with which to work for the redemption of China; and he was prepared to find them anywhere, and take what came to hand. His keynote was duty. The world went on snubbing, ignoring, insulting, traducing, and persecuting him; and he went on with the performance of his duty;—rather, with the more difficult task of searching for the duty he was to perform. This resorting to rebels, like that conversing with Nantse, shows him clearly not the formalist and slave of conventions he has been called, but a man of highest moral courage. What he stood for was not forms, conventions, reules, proprieties, or anything of the sort; but the liens of least resistance in his high endeavor to lift the world: lines of least resistance; middle lines; common sense.—As ususal, there was nothing to be done with the Duke of Ts'ae.
Wandering from state to state, he came on recluses in a field by the river, and sent Tse Lu forward to ask one of them the way to the ford. Said the hermit:—"You follow one who withdraws from court to court; it would be better to withdraw from the world altogether."—"What!" said Confucius when it was told him; "shall I not associate with mankind? If I do not associate with mankind, with whom shall I associate?"
In which answer lies a great key to Confucianism; turn it once or twice, and you get to the import of his real teaching. He never would follow the individual soul into its secrecies; he was concerned with man only as a fragment of humanity. He was concerned with man as humanity. All that the West calls (personal) religion he disliked intensely. Any desire or scheme to save your own soul; any right-doing for the sake of a reward, either here or hereafter, he would have bluntly called wrong- doing, anti-social and selfish. (I am quoting in substance from Dr. Lionel Giles.) He tempted no one with hopes of heaven; frightened none with threats of hell. It seemed to him that he could make a higher and nobler appeal,—could strike much more forcibly at the root of evil (which is selfishness), by saying nothing about rewards and punishments at all. The one inducement to virtue that he offered was this: By doing right, you lead the world into right-doing. He was justified in saying that Man is divine; because this divine appeal of his was effective; not like the West's favorite appeal to fear, selfish desire, and the brutal side of our nature. "Do right to escape a whipping, or a hanging, or hell-fire," says Christendom; and the nations reared on that doctrine have risen and fallen, risen and fallen; a mad riot of people struggling into life, and toppling back into death in a season; so that future ages and the far reaches of history will hardly remember their names, too lightly graven upon time. But China, nourished on this divine appeal, however far she may have fallen short of it, has stood, and stood, and stood. In the last resort, it is the only inducement worth anything; the only lever that lifts.—There is that li,—that inevitable rightness and harmony that begins in the innermost when there is the balance and duty is being done, and flows outward healing and preserving and making wholesome all the phases of being;—let that harmony of heaven play through you, and you are bringing mankind to virtue; you are pouting cleansing currents into the world. How little of the tortuosity of metaphysics is here;—but what grand efficacity of super-ethics! You remember what Light on the Path says about the man who is a link between the noise of the market-place and the silence of the snow-capped Himalayas; and what it says about the danger of seeking to sow good karma for oneself,—how the man that does so will only be sowing the giant weed of selfhood. In those two passages you find the essence of Confucianism and the wisdom and genius of Confucius. It is as simple as A B C; and yet behind it lie all the truths of metaphysics and philosophy. He seized upon the pearl of Theosophic thought, the cream of all metaphysics, where metaphysics passes into action,—and threw his strength into insisting on that: Pursue virtue because it is virtue, and that you may (as you will,—it is the only way you can) bring the world to virtue; or negatively, in the words of Light on the Path: "Abstain (from vice) because it is right to abstain—not that yourself shall be kept clean." And now to travel back into the thought behind, that you may see if Confucius was a materialist; whether or not he believed in the Soul;—and that if he was not a great original thinker, at least he commanded the ends of all great, true and original thinking. Man, he says, is naturally good. That is, collectively. Man is divine and immortal; only men are mortal and erring. Were there a true brotherhood of mankind established, a proper relation of the parts to the whole and to each other,—you would have no difficulty with what is evil in yourself. The lower nature with its temptations would not appear; the world-old battle with the flesh would be won. But separate yourself in yourself,—consider yourself as a selfhood, not as a unit in society;—and you find, there where you have put yourself, evil to contend with a-plenty. Virtue inheres in the Brotherhood of Man; vice in the separate personal and individual units. Virtue is in That which is no man's possession, but common to all: namely, the Soul—though he does not enlarge upon it as that; perhaps never mentions it as the Soul at all;—vice is in that which each has for himself alone: the personality. Hence his hatred of religiosity, of personal soul-saving. You were to guard against evil in the simplest way: by living wholly in humanity, finding all you motives and sources of action there. If you were, in the highest sense, simply a factor in human society, you were a good man. If you lived in yourself alone,—having all evil to meet there, you were likely to succumb to it; and you were on the wrong road anyway. Come out, then; think not of your soul to be saved, nor of what may befall you after death. You, as you, are of no account; all that matters is humanity as a whole, of which you are but a tiny part.—Now, if you like, say that Confucius did not teach Theosophy, because, so far as we know, he said nothing about Karma or Reincarnation. I am inclined to think him one of the two or three supreme historical Teachers of Theosophy; and to say that his message, so infinitely simple, is one of the most wonderful presentations of it ever given.
It is this entire purity from all taint of personal religion; this distaste for prayer and unrelish for soul-salvation; this sweet clean impersonality of God and man, that makes the missionary writers find him so cold and lifeless. But when you look at him, it is a marvelously warm-hearted magnetic man you see: Such a One as wins hearts to endless devotion. Many of the disciples were men who commanded very much the respect of the world. The king of Ts'u proposed to give Confucius an independent duchy: to make a sovereign prince of him, with territories absolutely his own. But one of his ministers dissuaded him thus: "Has your majesty," said he, "any diplomatist in your service like Tse Kung? Or anyone so fitted to be prime minister as Yen Huy? Or a general to compare with Tse Lu? . . . If K'ung Ch'iu were to acquire territory, with such men as these to serve him, it would not be to the prosperity of Ts'u."—And yet those three brilliant men were content—no, proud—to follow him on his hopeless wanderings, sharing all his long sorrow; they were utterly devoted to him. Indeed, we read of none of his disciples turning against him;—which also speaks mighty well for the stuff that was to be found in Chinese humanity in those days.
Tse Kung was told that some prince or minister had said that he, Tse Kung, was a greater man than Confucius. He answered: "The wall of my house rises only to the height of a man's shoulders; anyone can look in and see whatever excellence is within. But the Master's wall is many fathoms in height; so that who fails to find the gateway cannot see the beauties of the temple within nor the rich apparel of the officiating priests. It may be that only a few will find the gate. Need we be surprised, then, at His Excellency's remark?" Yen Huy said:—"The Master knows how to draw us after him by regular steps. He broadens our outlook with polite learning, and restrains our impulses by teaching us self-control."
Only once, I think, is he recorded to have spoken of prayer. He was very ill, and Tse Lu proposed to pray for his recovery. Said Confucius: "What precedent is there for that?"—There was great stuff in that Tse Lu: a bold warriorlike nature; not very pliable; not too easy to teach, I imagine, but wonderfully paying for any lesson taught and learned. He figures often as the one who clings to the letter, and misses vision of the spirit of the teaching; so now the Master plays him a little with this as to precedent,—which weighed always more strongly with Tse Lu than with Confucius.—"In the Eulogies," said Tse Lu, (it is a lost work), "it is written: 'We pray to you, O Spirits of Heaven and Earth."—"Ah!" said Confucius, "my prayers began long, long ago." But he never did pray, in the Western sense. His life was one great intercession and petition for his people.
As to his love of ritual: remember that there are ceremonies and ceremonies, some with deep power and meaning. Those that Confucius upheld came down to him from Adept Teachers of old; and he had an eye to them only as outward signs of a spiritual grace, and means to it. "Ceremonies indeed!" said he once; "do you think they are a mere matter of silken robes and jade omaments? Music forsooth! Can music be a mere thing of drums and bells?"—Or of harps, lutes, dulcimers, sackbuts, psalteries, and all kinds of instruments, he might have added; all of which, together with all rites, postures, pacings, and offerings, were nothing to him unless channels through which the divine li might be induced to flow. Yet on his wanderings, by the roadside, in lonely places, he would go through ceremonies with his disciples. Why?—Why is an army drilled? If you go to the root of the matter, it is to make one the consciousness of the individual soldiers. So Confucius, as I take it, in his ceremonies sought to unify the consciousness of his disciples, that the li might have passage through them. I say boldly it was a proof of that deep occult knowledge of his,—which he never talked about.
They asked him once if any single ideogram conveyed the whole law of life.—"Yes," he said; and gave them one compounded of two others, which means 'As heart':—the missionaries prefer to render it 'reciprocity.' His teaching—out of his own mouth we convict him—was the Doctrine of the Heart. He was for the glow in the heart always; not as against, but as the one true cause of, external right action. But the Heart doctrine cannot be defined in a set of rules and formulae; so he was always urging middle lines, common sense. That is the explanation of his famous answer when they asked him whether injuries should be repaid with kindness. What he said amounts to this: "For goodness sake, use common sense! I have given you 'as heart' for your rule."—We know Katherine Tingley's teaching: not one of us but has been helped and saved by it a thousand times. I can only say that, in the light of that, the more you study Confucius, the greater he seems; the more extraordinary the parallelisms you see between her method and his. Perhaps it is because his method has been so minutely recorded. We do not find here merely ethical precepts, or expositions of philosophic thought: what we see is a Teacher guiding and adjusting the lives of his disciples.
When he had been three years at Ts'ae, the King of Ts'u invited him to his court. Ts'u, you will remember, lay southward towards the Yangtse, and was, most of the time, one of the six Great Powers.* Here at last was something hopeful; and Confucius set out. But Ts'ae and Ch'in, though they had neglected him, had not done so through ignorance of his value; and were not disposed to see his wisdom added to the strength of Ts'u. They sent out a force to waylay him; which surrounded him in the wilderness and held him besieged but unmolested for seven days. Food ran out, and the Confucianists were so enfeebled at last that they could hardly stand. We do not hear that terms were offereed, as that they should turn back or go elsewhere: the intention seems to have been to make an end of Confucius and Confucianism altogether,—without bloodshed. Even Tse Lu was shaken.—"Is it for the Princely Man," said he, "to suffer the pinch of privation?"—"Privation may come his way," Confucius answered; "but only the vulgar grow reckless and demoralized under it." So saying he took his lute and sang to them, and hearing him they forgot to fear. Meanwhile one of the party had won through the lines, and brought word to Ts'u of the Master's plight; whereat the king sent a force to his relief, and came out from the capital to receive him in state. The king's intentions were good; but we have seen how his ministers intrigued and diverted them. In the autumn of that year he died, having become somewhat estranged from the Master. His successor was one from whom no good could be expected, and Confucius returned to Wei.
———- * Ancient China Simplified: by Prof. E. Harper Parker; from which book the account of the political condition and divisions of the empire given in these lectures is drawn. ———
Duke Ling was dead, and his grandson, Chuh, was on the throne. There had been a complication of family crimes plottings: Chuh had driven out his father, who in turn had attempted the life of his own mother, Nantse. Chuh wished to employ Confucius, but not to forgo his evil courses: it was a situation that could not be sanctioned. For six years the Master lived in retirement in Wei, watching events, and always sanguine that his chance would come. He was not sixty-nine years old; but hoped to begin his life's work presently.
Then suddenly he was in demand,—in two quarters. There was a sort of civil war in Wei, and the chief of one of the factions came to him for advice as to the best means of attacking the other. Confucius was disgusted. Meanwhile Lu had been at war with Ts'i; and Yen Yu, a Confucianist, put in command of the Lu troops, had been winning all the victories in sight. Marquis Ting now slept with his fathers, and Marquis Gae reigned in his stead; also there was a new Chief of Clan Chi to run things:— Gae to reign, Chi to rule. They asked Yen Yu where he had learned his so victorious generalship; and he answered, "from Confucius."—If a mere disciple could do so much, they thought, surely the Master himself could do much more: as, perhaps, lead the Lu armies to universal victory. So they sent him a cordial invitation, with no words as to the warlike views that prompted it. High in hope, Confucius set out; these fourteen years his native country had been pulling at his heart-strings, and latterly, more insistently than ever. But on his arrival he saw how the land lay. Chi consulted him about putting down brigandage: Chi being, as you might say, the arch-brigand of Lu.—"If you, Sir, were not avaricious," said Confucius, "though you offered men rewards for stealing, they would cleave to their honesty." There was nothing to be done with such men as these; he went into retirement, having much literary work to finish. That was in 483.
In 482 his son Li died; and a year later Yen Huy, dearest of his disciples. We have seen how he gave way to grief. There is that strange mystery of the dual nature; even in Such a One. There is the human Personality that the Great Soul must work through. He had performed his function; he had fulfilled his duty; all that he owed to the coming ages he had paid in full. But the evidence goes to show that he was still looking forward for a chance to begin, and that every disappointmtnt hurt the outward man of him: that it was telling on him: that it was a sad, a disappointed, even a heart-broken old man that wept over Yen Huy.—In 481, we read, a servant of the Chief of Clan Chi caught a strange one-horned aninial, with a white ribbon tied to its horn. None had seen the like of it; and Confucius, being the most learned of men, was called in to make pronouncement. He recognised it at once from his mother's description: it was the k'e-lin, the unicorn; that was the ribbon Chingtsai had decked it with in the cave on Mount Ne the night of his birth. He burst into tears. "For whom have you come?" he cried; "for whom have you come?" And then: "The course of my doctrine is run, and wisdom is still neglected, and success is still worshiped. My principles make no progress: how will it be in the after ages?" —Ah, could he have know!—I mean, that old weary mind and body; the Soul which was Confucius knew.
Yen Huy, Tse Lu, and Tse Kung: those were the three whom he had loved and trusted most. Yen Huy was dead; Tse Lu, with Tse Kao, another disciple, he had left behind in Wei holding office under the duke. Now news came that a revolution had broken out there. "Tse Kao will return," said he; "but Tse Lu will die." So it fell. Tse Kao, finding the duke's cause hopeless, made his escape; but Tse Lu fought the forlorn hope to the end, and died like a hero. Only Tse Kung, of the three, was left to him. Who one morning, when he went to the Master's house, found him walking to and fro before the door crooning over this verse:
"The great mountain must crumble,
The strong beam must break.
The wise man must wither like a flower."
Heavy-hearted, Tse Kung followed him in.—"What makes you so late?" said Confucius; and then: "According to the rites of Hia, the dead lay in state at the top of the eastern steps, as if he were the host. Under the Shangs, it was between the two pillars he lay, as if he were both host and guest. The rite of the Chows is for him to lie at the top of the western steps, as if he were the guest. I am a man of Shang,"—it will be remembered that he was descended from that royal house; "and last night I dreamed that I was sitting between the pillars, with offerings set out before me. No intelligent monarch arises; no prince will make me his teacher. My time has come to die."—That day he took to his bed; his passing was a week later.
On the banks of the Sze his disciples buried him; and for three years mourned at his grave. But Tse Kung built himself a cabin at the graveside, and remained there three years longer. "All my life," said he, "I have had heaven above my head, but I do not know its height. I have had earth beneath my feet, but I have not known its magnitude. I served Confucius: I was like a thirsty man going with his pitcher to the river. I drank my fill, but I never knew the depth of the water."
And Tse Kung was right; and what he felt then, one feels now. You read Boswell, and have your Johnson in the hollow of your hand: body, soul, and spirit: higher triad and lower quaternary. Of Confucius we have a picture in some respects even more detailed than Boswell's of Johnson; but when we have said everything, we still feel that nothing has been said. Boswell lets you in through his master's church-door; shows you nave and aisle, vault and vestry; climbs with you to the belfry; stands with you at the altar and in the pulpit; till you have seen everything there is to see. But with Confucius as with every Adept the case is quite different. "The Master's wall is fathomless," said Tse Kung; but he and the other disciples took care that China at least should find the gate of entry; and it is still possible for us to go in, and "see the beauty of the temple, the richness of the robes of the officiating priests." You go through everything; see him under all sorts of circumstances; and ask at last: "Is this all?"—No, says your guide; "see here!" and flings one last door open. And that, like the door in Lord Dunsaney's play, opens on to the vastness of the stars. What is it that baffles us and remains undefined and undefinable? Just this: TAO: the Infinite Nature. You can survey the earth, and measure it with chains; but not Space, in which a billion leagues is nowise different from an inch or two, —it bears the same proportion to the whole.
There was his infinite trust;—and his unbroken silence as to the Things he trusted in. Time and the world went proving to him year by year that his theories were all impracticable, all wrong; that he was a failure; that there was not anything for him to do, and never would be a chance for him to do it;—and all their arguments, all the sheer dreadful tyranny of fact, had no weight with him at all: he went on and on. What was his sword of strength? Where were the Allies in whom he trusted? How dared he pit K'ung Ch'iu of Lu against time and the world and me?—The Unseen was with him, and the Silence; and he (perhaps) lifted no veil from the Unseen, and kept silent as to the silence;—and yet maintained his Movement, and held his disciples together, and saved his people,—as if he himself had been the Unseen made visible, and the Silence given a voice to speak.
And with it all there was the human man who suffered. I think you will love him the more for this, from the Analects:
"The Minister said to Tse Lu, Tseng Hsi, Jan Yu, and Kung-hsi Hua as they sat beside him: 'I may be a day older than you are, but forget that. You are wont to say, "We are unknown." Well; had ye a name in the world, what would ye do?'"
"Tse Lu answered lightly: 'Give me charge of a land of a thousand chariots, crushed between great neighbors, overrun by soldiery and oppressed by famine; in three years' time I should have put courage and high purpose into the people.'"
"The Master smiled,—'What wouldst thou do, Ch'iu?' he said."
"Jan Yu answered: 'Had I charge of sixty or seventy square miles, or from fifty to sixty, in three years' time I would give the people plenty. As for courtesy, music and the like, they could wait for these for the rise of a Princely Man.'"
"'And what wouldst thou do, Chih?' said the Master."
"Kung-hsi Hua answered: 'I would speak of the things I fain would learn, not of what I can do. At service in the Ancestral Temple, or at the Grand Audience, clad in black robe and cap, I fain would fill a small part.'"
"'And thou, Tien?' said the Master."
"Tseng Hsi stopped playing, pushed away his still sounding lute, rose up, and made answer: 'My choice would be unlike those of the other three.'"
"'What harm in that?' said the Master. 'Each but speaks his mind.'"
"Tseng Hsi said: 'In the last days of Spring, and clad for the season, with five or six grown men and six or seven lads, I would bathe in the waters of Yi, all fanned by the breeze in the Rain God's Glade, and wander home with song.'"
"The Master sighed.—'I hold with Tien,' said he."
Very, very human, I say; very Chinese. But here is that which was not human but divine: he never turned from his path to satisfy these so human and Chinese longings; the breeze in the Rain God's Glade never blew for him. It is just as well to remember, when you read of the ceremonies, the body bent under the load of the scepter, the carefully chosen (as it may seem) and habitually worn expression of face on passing or approaching the throne, the "elbows spread like wings":—all the formal round of proprieties;—that it was the last days of Spring, and the waters of Yi, and the breeze in the Rain God's Glade, that were calling to his Chinese heart.
Yes; he was very human; listen to this:—Yuan Jang awaited the Master squatting on the ground. "The Master said:—'Unruly when young, unmentioned as man, undying when old,—this spells Good-for-nothing'; and hit him on the leg with his staff."
Which brings one naturally to his sense of humor.
Once he was passing through a by-street when a man of the district shouted:—"Great is Confucius the Philosopher! Yet for all his wide learning he has nothing which can bring him fame!" The Master turned to his disciples and said:—"What shall I take up? Shall I take up charioteering?—or archery?—I must certainly take up charioteering!"
His disciples once were expecting him at the city of Ch'ing; and Tse Kung asked a man who was coming from the east gate if he had seen him there.—"Well," said the man, "there is a man there with a forehead like Yao, a neck like Kao Yao, his shoulders on a level with those of Tse-ch'an, but wanting below the waist three inches of the height of Yu;—and altogether having the forsaken appearance of a stray dog." Tse Kung recognised the description and hurried off to meet the Master, to whom he reported it verbatim. Confucius was hugely delighted. "A stray dog!" said he; "fine! fine!" Unluckily, no contemporary photographs of Yao and Yu and the others have come down; so the description is not as enlightening now as it may have been then.
"Tse Kung," we read, "would compare one man with another." The Master said:—"What talents Tse has! Now I have no time for such things!"
I keep on hearing in his words accents that sound familiar.
When he was at Loyang—Honanfu—one of the things that struck him most was a bronze statue in the Temple of the Imperial Ancestors, with a triple, clasp on its mouth. One does not wonder. A Great Soul from the God World, he kept his eyes resolutely on the world of men; as if he remembered, nothing of the splendor, and nothing foresaw. . . . Indeed, I cannot tell; one would give much to know what really passed between him and Laotse. If you say that no word of his lightens, for you that 'dusk within the Holy of holies',—at least he gives you the keys, and leaves you to find and open the 'Holy of holies' for yourself if you can. There are lost chapters, that went at the Burning of the Books; and an old-fashioned Chinaman would often tell you of any Western idea or invention his countrymen may not have known, that you should have found all in the lost chapters of Confucius. It may be;—and that you should have found there better things, too, than Western ideas and inventions. There is a passage in the Analects that tells how the disciples thought he was 'keeping back from them some part of his doctrine: "No, no," he answered; "if I should not give it all to you, to whom should I give it?" Distinctly, then, this suggests that there was an esotericism, a side not made public; and there is no reason to suppose that it has been made public since. But it is recorded that he would lift no veils from the Other-worlds. "If you do not understand life," said he, "how can you understand death?"
Well; we who are stranded here, each on his desert island of selfhood, thrust out after knowledge: peer for signs at all the horizons;—are eager to inquire, and avid of the Unknown—which also we imagine to be something outside of our own being. But suppose a man, as they say one with Tao, in which all knowledge rests in solution: what knowledge would he desire? After what would he be inquisitive? And how much, desiring it, would he possess? What is the end of being, after all? To perform your function, your duty; what men and the world,—ay, and the far suns and stars,—are requiring of you:—that is all. Not to gain infinite knowledge; but to have at, every step what knowledge you need; that so you may fill your place in the Universe, meeting all contours and flowing into them; restoring and maintaining the Harmony of Things. So we hear much about this performance of duty. But in reality, to do one's duty is to sing with the singing spheres; to have the Top of Infinity for the roof of one's skull, and the bottom of the Great Deep for one's footsoles: to be a compendium, and the Equal, of Heaven and Earth. The password into the Tao of Laotse is Silence; Confucius kept the great Silence more wonderfully than Laotse did—or so it seems to me now. Laotse said: Sing with the singing spheres, and behold, your duty is doing itself uder your hands. The password into the Tao of Confucius is Duty: he said merely Do that, and,—the rest is silence. He may have played that rest on his lute; we are not to hear it in his words. There was a knowledge that Laotse, enthroned in his silence, had no means of using; that Confucius riding the chariot of duty, had no occasion to possess.
Now whether you call Tao duty, or silence,—what should the Man of Tao desire beyond the fulness of it? All the light is there for him; all the suns are kindled for him;—why should he light wax candles? That is, for himself: he will light them fast enough where others may be in need. To us, a great poem may be a great thing: but to them who have the fulness of which the greatest poem is but a little glimpse—what should it matter to them? And of the infinite knowledge at his disposal, would the Man of Tao choose to burden himself with one little item of which there was no present need?
So when they say, "Confucius was nobody; there is no evidence that he knew the great secrets"; answer them:—"Yes, there is. He knew that supreme secret, how to teach, which is the office of a Teacher: he knew how to build up the inner life of his disciples; to coax, train, lure the hidden god into manifestation in them." And for evidence you can give them this: Tse Kung—who, you remember, was always comparing this man with that—asked which was the better, Shih or Shang. (They were two disciples.) Confucius answered: "Shih goes too far; Shang not far enough." Said Tse Kung (just as you or I would have done):— "Then Shih is the better man?"—"Too far," replied Confucius, "is not better than not far enough."—To my ears there is more occultism in that than in a thousand ethical injunctions.—Or answered;—"Whilst thy father and they elder brother are alive, how canst thou do all thou art taught?" Jan Yu said:—"Shall I do all I am taught?" The Master said:—"Do all thou art taught." Kung-hsi Hua said: "Yu asked, 'Shall I do all I am taught?' and you spoke, Sir, of father and elder brother. Ch'iu asked, 'Shall I do all I am taught?' and you answered: 'Do all thou art taught.' I am puzzled, and make bold to ask you, Sir." The Master said:—"Ch'iu is bashful, so I egged him on. Yu has the pluck of two, so I held him back."
Think it over! Think it over!
This though occurs to me: Was that sadness of his last days caused by the knowledge that the School could not continue after his death; because the one man who might have succeeded him as the Teacher, Yen Huy, was dead? So far as I know, it did not go on; there was no one to succeed him. That supreme success, that grand capture of future ages for the Gods, was denied him; or I daresay our own civilization might have been Confucian—BALANCED —now. But short of that—how sublime a figure he stands! If he had known that for twenty-five centuries or so he was to shine within the vision of the great unthinking masses of his countrymen as their supreme example; their anchor against the tides of error, against abnormalities, extravagances, unbalance; a bulwark against invading time and decay; a check on every bad emperor, so far as check might be set at all; a central idea to mold the hundred races of Chu Hia into homogeneity; a stay, a prop, a warning against headlong courses at all times of cyclic downtrend;—if he had known all this, he would, I think, have ordered his life precisely as he did. Is there no strength implied, as of the Universal, and not of any personal, will, however titanic, in the fact that moment after moment, day after day, year after year, he built up this picture, gave the world this wonderful assurance of a man? In his omissions, no less than in his fulfilments. He taught,—so far as we know,—nothing but what the common mind might easily accept; nothing to miss the mark of the intelligence of dull Li or Ching toiling in the rice-field;—nor yet too paltry for the notice of the Hwangti on the Dragon Throne. Laotse had come in the spirit of Plenydd the Light-bringer; in the spirit of Alawn, to raise up presently sweet profusions of song. He illuminated the inner worlds; his was the urge that should again and again, especially later when reinforced by Buddhism, prick up the Black-haired People to heights of insight and spiritual achievement.—But the cycles of insight and spiritual achievement, these too, must always run their course and fall away; there is no year when it is always Spring. Dark moments and seasons come; and the Spirit becomes hidden; and what you need most is not illumination,—which you cannot get; or if you could, it would be hell, and not heaven, that would be illuminated for you; not a spur to action,—for as things are constituted, any spur at such a time would drive you to wrong and exorbitant action:—what you need is not these, but simply stability to hold on; simply the habit of propriety, the power to go on at least following harmless conventions and doing harmless things; not striking out new lines for yourself, which would certainly be wrong lines, but following as placidly as may be lines that were laid down for you, or that you yourself laid down, in more righteous and more luminous times. A strong government, however tyrannical, is better than an anarchy in which the fiend in every man is let loose to run amuck. Under the tyranny, yes, the aspiring man will find himself hindered and thwarted; but under the anarchy, since man is no less hell than heaven, the gates of hell will be opened, and the Soul, normally speaking, can only retire and wait for better times:—unless it be the Soul of a Confucius, it can but wait till Karma with ruthless hands has put down the anarchy and cleared things up. Unless it be the Soul of a Confucius; and even Such a One is bound to be a failure in his own day.
But see what he did. The gates of hell were swung wide, and for the time being, not the hosts of the Seraphim and Cherubim,—not the armed Bodhisatvas and Dhyanis,—could have forced them back on their hinges: "the ripple of effect," we read, "thou shalt let run its course." But in the ideal world he erected a barrier against them. He set up a colossal statue with arms outthrown to bar the egress; the statue of Confucius preaching the Balanced Life. With time it materialized, so to say, and fell into place. You can never certainly stop the gates of hell,—in this stage of our evolution. But perhaps as nearly as it can be done, he did it. Rome fell, and Christendom made a mess of things; it has never yet achieved that union which is the first condition of true civilization. But China, older than Rome, despite her sins and vicissitudes, has made a shift to stand. I shall come to comparing the two histories presently; then you will see. When the pralaya came on her, and the forces of life all went elsewhere—as they do and must from every civilization in their season,—China lost two of her treasures: Plenydd's vision, and Alawn's gift of song, were taken from her. But this stability; these Gloves of Gwron; this instinct for middle courses and the balance, this Doctrine of the Mean and love of plain sane doings: she has retained enough of this to keep her in being. And it was K'ung Ch'iu of Lu that gave it to her. Shall we not call him Such a One as only the Gods send?
Someone told me the other day what he had seen a couple of Chinamen do in a Californian garden. They had a flower-bed to plant, about forty feet long; and each a basket of seedlings to plant it with, and a slip of wood for a model, with mystic unintelligible signs inscribed thereon: WELCOME HOME in English capitals. One went to one end of the bed and the other to the other, and they began their planting. They made no measurements or calculations; used no rod or line; but just worked ahead till they met in the middle. When that happened, and the job was done, the bed was inscribed, in perfectly formed and proportioned English capitals made of young plants, WELCOME HOME. There was no crowding or omission. To account for it you have twenty-four centuries of Confucianism,—of Katherine Tingley's doctrine of Middle Lines, the Balanced Life.
It is a very small thing; but it may help us to understand.