History as past ethics; an introduction to the history of morals

by P. V. N. Myers

II. The Ideal

The four cardinal virtues

Chiefly under the molding influence of the agencies noticed in the preceding sections, there was shaped in early times in China one of the most remarkable moral ideals of history, an ideal which has been a guiding and controlling force in the moral life of probably more of the human race than any other of the ethical ideals of mankind.

The duties given the highest place in this standard of character are filial obedience, reverence for superiors, a conforming to ancient custom, and the maintenance of the just medium. The man who is carefully observant of these duties is looked upon in China as a man of superior excellence. In the following pages we shall speak with some detail of each of these requirements of the ethical ideal.

Filial obedience or piety

In an analysis of the symbols used in the Chinese system of writing Dr. Legge points out the significant fact that one of the oldest of these characters, the one standing for filial piety, was originally the picture of a youth upholding on his shoulders an old man.[140] In this worn-down symbol is embodied the fundamental fact in the moral life of the Chinese people. It tells us that the first of family virtues, filial piety, the virtue that formed the basis of the strength and greatness of early Rome, constituted also the firm foundation upon which the enduring fabric of Chinese society was raised. The whole framework of the social structure is modeled on the family, and all relations and duties are assimilated, in so far as possible, to those of the domestic circle.

In no other of the moral ideals of history do we find a more prominent place given the duties of children toward their parents. It was ancestor worship, doubtless, as we have already said, which gave these duties this foremost place in the moral code, and which through all the millenniums of Chinese history has maintained for them the highest place in the Chinese standard of moral excellence.[141] The Classic of Filial Piety declares: “The services of love and reverence to parents when alive, and those of grief and sorrow to them when dead—these completely discharge the fundamental duty of living men.”[142] “The Master said: ‘There are three thousand offenses against which the five punishments are directed, and there is not one of them greater than being unfilial.’”[143]

The punishments which the Chinese laws enjoin for unfilial conduct bear witness to the high estimation in which the Chinese moralists and rulers hold the virtue of filial obedience and reverence. Thus a parent may, with the consent of the maternal uncle, require a magistrate to whip to death an unfilial son.[144] A parricide is beheaded, his body cut in pieces, his house torn down, his neighbors are punished, his chief teacher is put to death, and the magistrates of the district in which he lived are degraded or deposed.[145]

Reverence toward superiors

Filial piety is regarded by Chinese moralists as the root out of which grow all other virtues. Immediately out of this root springs the duty of obedience and reverence toward all superiors. This is the corner stone of the Chinese system of political ethics. “In the family life,” in the words of Jernigan, “may be seen the larger life of the empire.”[146]

A conforming to ancient custom

We have here the third of the cardinal duties, the duty which in practice constitutes the heart and core of Chinese morality.[147] The commandment is, Follow the ancients; walk in the trodden paths; let to-day be like yesterday. This duty, as we have already noticed, springs from the Chinese conception of the past as perfect. If that past be perfect, then of course it becomes the duty of living men to make the present like unto it, and in no case to depart from the customs and practices of the fathers.

We can easily make the Chinese view in this matter intelligible to ourselves by recalling how we have been wont to regard the religious past of that Hebrew world of which we are the heirs. Sanctity in our minds has attached to it all, and we regard any departure from the teachings and commandments of that past to be a fault, even a species of wickedness deserving eternal punishment.

Now in China this idea of sanctity, which among ourselves attaches only to the religious side of life, has attached to all phases of life, to government, to society, to art, to science, to trade and commerce—to all of the ideas, ways, and customs of antiquity. As their fathers did, so must the children do. They must deem worthy what their fathers deemed worthy and love what their fathers loved.[148] He who departs from the beliefs and practices of the ancients is regarded as irreverent and immoral, just as he who with us departs from the beliefs and customs of the fathers in religion is looked upon as presumptuous and irreligious.

The maintenance of the just medium

The virtue with which we here have to do is akin to the Greek virtue of moderation. It consists in never going to extremes, in avoiding excess in everything, in being always well balanced, standing in the middle, and leaning not to either side; “to go beyond is as wrong as to fall short.”[149] One of the sacred books of the Chinese, called Chung Yung, which is ascribed to a grandson of Confucius, and in which is portrayed an ideally perfect character, The Princely Man, celebrates this virtue of the just medium.[150] This portraiture of the perfect man, held up as a pattern for imitation to the successive generations of Chinese youth, has been a molding force in the moral life of the Chinese race.[151]

The duty of intellectual self-culture

Having now spoken of the four cardinal virtues of the Chinese standard of excellence, we shall next proceed to speak more briefly of several other virtues, which, though not given the most prominent place in the ideal, are nevertheless assigned a high place among the virtues exemplified by the perfect man.

First among these we note that of intellectual self-culture. Concerning this virtue and duty the Chinese sages have thoughts like those of the Greek teachers. Confucius taught that true morality is practically dependent upon learning. “It is not easy,” he says, “to find a man who has learned for three years without coming to be good.”[152] Here we have, as in the teachings of the Greek philosophers, knowledge made almost identical with goodness. Intellectual culture and good morals run together. Again the Master, speaking of the ancients, says: “Their knowledge being complete, their thoughts were sincere; their thoughts being sincere, their hearts were then rectified.”[153] “How would it be possible,” asks Lao-tsze, “to go forward in one’s knowledge and go backward in one’s morals?”[154]

This commendation of learning by the sages, as we shall see further on, gave a great impulse to the educational system of China.

The duties of rulers

The teachings of Chinese moralists are especially marked by the emphasis laid upon the duties of rulers. In the times of Confucius there was lack of union between the different provinces, and China was in a state bordering on political anarchy. A chief aim of the teachings of the Master was to correct this condition of things by laying stress upon the duties of those in authority. Never have the duties of rulers been more insistently inculcated.

In the first place Confucius set a high aim for the state, an aim altogether like that set by Plato for the ideal Greek city. He makes the end of government to be virtue and not wealth. Its aim should be to promote goodness and not merely material prosperity: “In a state, pecuniary gain is not to be considered to be prosperity, but prosperity will be found in righteousness.”[155]

The indispensable qualification in the ruler is goodness. “The love of what is good,” declares Mencius, “is more than a sufficient qualification for the government of the empire.”[156] The ruler should be a father to his people, kind and benevolent, should instruct them, should follow the laws of the ancient kings, should be a model for his subjects, should leave a good example to future ages.

Much is said by the Master respecting the influence of the example set by the ruler: “When the ruler as a father, a son, a brother, is a model, then the people imitate him.”[157] The relation between superior and inferior is like that between the wind and the grass: “The grass must bend when the wind blows across it.”[158] “Never has there been a case of the sovereign loving benevolence and the people not loving righteousness.”[159] “If good men were to govern a country in succession for a hundred years, they would be able to transform the violently bad and dispense with capital punishment.”[160]

But there has never been such a succession of good rulers in China. Respecting the influences and circumstances which have brought about a great discrepancy between the ideal and practice we shall have something to say in the last division of this chapter.

Disesteem of the heroic or martial virtues

The Chinese ideal of goodness and nobility allows no place among its virtues to the qualities of the warrior, which have in general been given such a prominent place in the moral ideals of almost all other peoples throughout all periods of history. Soldiers hold a very low place in the social scale; they are looked upon as a “pariah class,” and their life is regarded as degrading. The Emperor of China, “alone among the great secular rulers of the world, never wears a sword.”[161]

This spirit of opposition to militarism is embodied in the teachings of the great moralist Mencius. “The warlike Western world has scarcely known a more vigorous and sweeping protest against warfare and everything connected with it and every principle upon which it is based.”[162] To gain territory by the slaughter of men Mencius declared to be contrary to the principles of benevolence and righteousness.[163] He speaks as follows of the military profession: “There are men who say, I am skillful at marshaling troops. I am skillful in conducting a battle. They are great criminals.”[164] In Spring and Autumn, a chronicle of early Chinese history, he declares, “There are no righteous wars,” though he admits that one might be better than another.[165]

Confucius also, though he did not lay the stress upon the inherent wickedness of war that was placed upon it by Mencius, maintained that the same rules of morality apply in the relations of nations as in those of individuals, and taught that differences between nations should be settled by arbitration and by considerations of equity and justice, not by brute force.

Principles and inner disposition

It is often affirmed that the teachings of Chinese moralists are defective in that they consist in moral precepts rather than in moral principles, that they lay stress upon the observance of minute rules of conduct rather than upon the inner disposition. There is, however, in the body of ethical teachings of the sages no lack of insistence upon principles of conduct and upon states and dispositions of mind and heart. All must be right within the heart, says Confucius, for “what truly is within will be manifested without.”[166] “Let the prince be benevolent,” says Mencius, “and all his acts will be benevolent; let the prince be righteous and all his acts will be righteous.”[167] Have no depraved thoughts, sums up the contents of the three hundred pieces in the Book of Poetry. “In the ceremony of mourning,” says Confucius again, “it is better that there be deep sorrow than a minute attention to observances.”[168]

And it is the same teaching as to what constitutes true morality which we find in such sayings as these: “The doctrine of our Master is to be true to the principles of our nature.”[169] “Man is born for uprightness,”[170] and he should love virtue as he loves beauty,[171] for its own sake.

In reciprocity Confucius found that same comprehensive rule of conduct which is rightly regarded as one of the noblest principles of Christian morality. Being asked if there was one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one’s life, the Master said: “Is not reciprocity such a word? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.”[172]

And surely nothing could be farther from mere preceptorial teaching than these words of Mencius: “Let a man not do what his own sense of righteousness tells him not to do;... To act thus is all he has to do.”[173] And in the following utterances the sages of China speak with an accent strangely like that of the Great Prophet of Israel: “The great man is he who does not lose his child heart.”[174] Again, “I like life; I also like righteousness. If I cannot keep the two together, I will let life go and choose righteousness.”[175] Still again: “With coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and my bended arm for a pillow—I have still joy in the midst of these things.”[176]

In the following Mencius shows that he understood the moral use of dark things: “When Heaven is about to confer a great office on any man, it first exercises his mind with suffering and his sinews and bones with toil. It exposes his body to hunger and subjects him to extreme poverty. It confounds his undertakings. By all these methods it stimulates his mind, hardens his nature, and supplies his incompetencies.”[177] And again: “Life springs from sorrow and calamity, and death from ease and pleasure.”[178] “Men who are possessed of intelligent virtue and prudence in affairs will generally be found to have been in sickness and trouble.”[179]

Defects of the ideal: no duties to God, and the duties of parents to children not emphasized

Regarded from our point of view the Confucian ideal of moral character has serious limitations and defects. First, it omits practically all duties to God. In the words of Dr. Legge, “man’s duty to God is left to take care of itself.” God or Heaven was a subject of which Confucius seldom spoke, and the Chinese have in this matter followed the example of the Master. Heaven is not in all their thoughts.

If we recall what an influence the conception of a supreme being as Creator and Father has exerted upon the morality of all the races that have accepted as their creed the ethical monotheism of the Hebrew teachers, we shall realize how fundamentally the Chinese ideal of excellence has been modified by the omission of all those duties which have entered into our own moral code as duties owed to God.[180]

Second, while laying such stress upon the duties of children to their parents, Confucianism is almost silent regarding the duty of parents to their children. At this point there is a wide divergence between the Christian and the Chinese conception of duty. Commenting upon this matter, Dr. Legge says: “I never quoted in a circle of Chinese friends the words of Paul in Corinthians—‘The children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children’—without their encountering a storm of opposition. When I tried to show that the sentiment was favorable to the progress of society, and would enable each generation to start from a higher standpoint, I found it difficult to obtain a hearing.”[181]

The effects of the family ethics of Confucianism upon the moral practice of the Chinese in the domestic sphere will be noted in the following division of this chapter.