CHAPTER XIII
CONFUCIAN PHILOSOPHY AND WESTERN CULTURE
It is not realised in the West how much the modern movement in Japan owes its power and vitality to a native movement which welcomed change. In Japan Buddhism had failed, the one school of Confucianism which believed in change was dominant, and therefore it was a comparatively easy matter to introduce the extensive changes of Western civilisation. There was no religion with roots deeply entwined in the hearts of the people to oppose such a change. Shintoism had not yet been rediscovered and established, and it consisted merely of a mass of superstition, without any literature or organisation. Thus it was the combination of these facts, with the threatening attitude of Western powers, which made all the prophecies of men who knew the East untrue. No one understood the vital power of the movement in Japan. If, thirty years ago, some one had written a book to prove that Japan would one day defeat Russia, people would have laughed at the suggestion, and the authority of people who had lived in the East all their lives would have been quoted to prove that an Eastern race could never fully accept Western civilisation. The prophets were misled by the precedent of India and Turkey. The Western civilisation is met there by religions whose tenets are opposed to Western thought, and as long as those religions hold, Western views will make but small progress; but in Japan there was no such religion, and in China to-day there is no such religion. The Buddhism of China, like the Buddhism of Japan, may satisfy the cravings for spiritual religion of the uneducated and the ignorant; but the thinkers of both races—the statesmen, the writers, the leaders—are uninfluenced by Buddhism. Taoism has contributed to the thought and superstition of China, but is in no way now an important factor in her development; the philosophy of Confucius is the one vital force in the land.
Its doctrines are in no way opposed to our civilisation; it teaches mainly that a man must be sincere to his own higher nature; it has a profound belief in the greatness of human nature, and a very inadequate explanation, therefore, of the failures of that nature. That man must be sincere, so that the full beauty of his nature may appear, is one of its main tenets, and that this beautiful thing must be decorated with knowledge is a natural corollary. It undertakes the reform of the world, by convincing the ruler of his duty, and through him compelling the ruled to tread the right path, contrasting here very strongly with the religion of our Bible, though perhaps not with political Christianity. All through its teaching there is an underlying suggestion that subjects will obey their rulers not only outwardly but also inwardly in their opinions and convictions.
Confucianism does not believe in government by the people, of the people, for the people; but it believes very strongly in government for the people by the rulers. Many of its maxims might be cut out as texts, and hung up in the House of Commons with great appropriateness. It constantly pictures a well-ordered peaceful state, in which the dignity of government is well maintained, and where the working-man shall profit by his work through justice and peace, and the trader grow rich in confident security. In all this teaching it is not opposed to Western civilisation. Confucius advocates the reform of society by the action of the State. Thus the sanitary laws, the education laws, the temperance laws of the West are thoroughly consistent with the teaching of Confucius. Where that teaching differs from the West is that it disbelieves in democracy. Yet Confucianism cares nothing for a man's birth: all men are born equal to the Confucianist as to the Christian; and so Confucianism has, for many centuries, welcomed people of the lowest birth as Governors, if they could pass the requisite examinations, and, having given every opportunity to men of all classes to become officials, it entrusts them and not the people with the government of the country.
In another way Confucianism is opposed to Western civilisation. Confucianism believes intensely in the dignity of government; their classics are full of examples of people who, at the risk of their lives, defied kings and maintained the dignity of their positions; and this doctrine of dignity is consequently very deeply ingrained in Chinese thought; it is in reality the base of that curious doctrine of "face" by which a man will do anything rather than confess that he is wrong. A great missionary recounts how his wonderful work at Tientsin was once threatened with destruction because a boy from the south of China knocked a boy from the north off his bicycle, with the result that the college was soon divided into two factions on the question as to who should pay for the injured bicycle. The matter was only with difficulty arranged by the President paying for the bicycle and charging it to the guilty boy; but the boy did not mind paying—he minded confessing that he was wrong. There was another case in this same college where a boy had been induced to confess privately his sorrow that he had wilfully insulted a master. He was prepared to suffer expulsion rather than confess his fault openly. He was miserable at the prospect of leaving the college, and when a great appeal was made to his better feelings to say that he was sorry, he shook his head sadly. At last he was asked, "Have you never allowed you were wrong in your whole life?" "No," he said, with a look of pride, "never." Odious and detestable as this doctrine is in private life, I think I have the authority of St. Augustine for saying that it is a maxim of good government that however wrong an order may be, a superior should not confess his error, so necessary is this doctrine of dignity to government. Thus the Chinese expression "face" has been commonly accepted as a good English expression when speaking about governments.
No doubt it is this sense of dignity which gives such authority to the Chinese official. In many ways it may be an element of weakness. I was surprised to learn that the officials in the Yamen had never been in the shops of the city; it is beneath their dignity. Goods are brought to them and they buy in their own houses. For instance we were told how in Changsha two patriotic bas-reliefs were put up in a shop, one of them representing the Westerns bringing tribute to the Emperor of China, and the other depicting a Western woman, chained and dishevelled, being led in as a slave. Of course our very excellent and most efficient representative, Consul Hewlett, made instant representation to the Governor and the objectionable figures were removed; but the Chinese officials claimed that they were completely ignorant of what was happening in the shops of the town, because they never went there.
It is obvious that this high estimation of dignity makes much of Western government antipathetic to a Chinaman; he cannot sympathise with a civilisation which admires government by noisy agitation, vulgar posters, indecent journalism. Such an agitation as that in favour of women's suffrage is inconceivable and disgusting beyond words to the mind of a Chinese thinker; that women, whose dignity is such that they should never be tried in a public court; that educated ladies, whose names, in China, must scarcely be mentioned owing to their exalted position, should wrestle in a public crowd and be arrested, is one of those mysteries in Western government that the dignified Eastern mind can never hope to understand.
Confucianism, considered by itself, is not unfavourable to Western civilisation, and its great influence in China will no doubt largely accelerate the Westernisation of that vast empire. For instance, the policy of education is one which has been followed by China for many a long year; all that the Chinese are doing is to alter the object of that education. It used to aim at giving men a complete knowledge of the Chinese classics; now it aims at giving them in addition a knowledge of the West and of natural sciences; and so such an eminent Confucian scholar and such an ardent Conservative as the late Chang-Chih-Tung was the foremost advocate for a Western education.
Again the development of the Press on Western lines takes place rapidly in China, where newspapers have long been known, and which boasts of being a country possessing the oldest newspaper in the world, the Peking Gazette. Translations of Western literature issued by the Christian Literature Society are read with avidity by a race that esteems literature highly, no matter with what subject it deals, and who has no worse an epithet for one of its emperors than "book-burner."
Though Confucianism is not antipathetic to Western civilisation as a whole, and by its philosophy and literature encourages education in Western ideas, yet those ideas will, I fear, be fatal to that mighty system of ethics that has kept China together, and has enabled her to conquer her conquerors so many times. The countries that have never known Confucius are succeeding far better than the countries that have been taught by him. The fact that he always claimed that any race who followed his teaching would be prosperous, coupled with the fact that China, with her splendid resources and immense population, is far poorer and weaker than nations who know nothing of his teaching, is sufficient to bring its own condemnation to this philosophy. There is a marked difference in the teaching of Christianity and Confucianism in this respect. Christianity, by the example of its founder, teaches that the world must be reformed through the individual; and that the destruction of a State, whether it be Jerusalem or Rome, is only a painful incident in the upward advance of mankind. If every Western State were destroyed, the true Christian would only pause longer over his reading of the prophet Jeremiah; but when China, the home of Confucianism, realises her powerlessness in the face of the West, in sorrow and regret she will close the books of Confucius, as the books that guided the State to destruction, even though that teaching was pleasant and beautiful.
A great Chinaman realised that this was the position of Japan, and told me that he did not believe that in Japan any one really believed in Buddhism or in Confucianism or in the new-found Shintoism; and that, as they had not yet accepted Christianity, they were in a state, odious to the Western and Eastern alike, of being without moral guidance in this world. The position of Japan to-day will, in all probability, be, both in regard to the constructive and destructive effects of Western civilisation, the condition of China to-morrow, unless indeed Christianity can fill the vacant place in Chinese thought. Never before has such an opportunity been presented to the Christian world as this vast mass of population included under the name of China, left homeless by the action of world thought.
Those millions of people, for instance, who yearn for a spiritual religion, and who have found in times past some comfort in the confused and corrupt faith of Chinese Buddhism, are now ready with open ears to listen to any one who is prepared to teach them a higher and more spiritual religion. The Confucian scholar who realises the debt that China owes to the teaching of the sage, and yet who feels that Western civilisation is sapping his authority and leaving China without a moral guide, welcomes readily the teaching of the moral philosopher who is prepared to show that Confucianism is essentially right and has evidence of Divine truth within it, but that it only errs in not realising that the complete salvation of man can only be accomplished by those who appeal to his spiritual nature as well as to his moral sentiments.
If Christianity conquers China, one of her first actions will be to reinstate Confucius in the position from which Western materialism has dethroned him; but the task would be infinitely easier if Christians could take effective action at once. Every day that passes makes the position more difficult. Every Confucian scholar who shuts up his books and opens the books of the materialistic philosopher of the West, will prove an additional obstacle in the way of the Christianisation of China. The great danger is that the West, ignorant of what is happening in the East, will let this opportunity pass and allow Western materialism to establish itself as a force in China, as it has established itself as a force in Japan. The world is full of examples of lost opportunities; let us hope that China will not have to be added to that sad category.