It appears that some agents of Confucius had been sent by him to survey certain districts in the kingdom of Lu, and on their return they reported to him that wealthy inhabitants were in the habit of erecting sepulchres on lands which might be made very fertile.
"That is a strange abuse," cried Confucius, "and one which I mean to remedy. Burial-places should not resemble gardens of pleasure and amusement, they should be the scene of sobs and tears; it was thus that they were regarded by the ancients. To enjoy magnificent and sumptuous repasts where everything is suggestive of luxury and joy, near the tombs containing the bones of those to whom we owe our lives, is a kind of insult to the dead. These tombs must no longer be surrounded by walls, they must no longer be encircled by trees symmetrically planted. When deprived of all these frivolous ornaments, the homage which all will hasten to pay to those who have ceased to live will be sincere and pure. If, then, we desire to perform funeral rites in the spirit of their first founders we must remain true to the traditions of the sages of the remote past."
FIG. 28.—A CHINESE CEMETERY.
For the twenty-three centuries which have elapsed since this protest was written, Chinese sepulchres have always been placed on high ground of a dreary, desolate aspect, with nothing to mark them but a plain unsculptured slab of stone.
Philosophers very seldom become real friends, and the more they are thrown together the less cordial become their relations. The story goes that Confucius as a young man went to pay his respects to Lao-Tsze, but that the latter gave his visitor very haughtily to understand that he considered him wanting in humility, by which he probably meant that Confucius was too much occupied with the things of this world, and not enough with those of heaven. The fact is, that the younger reformer was interested in everything that was going on wherever he happened to be, and was ready to talk to everybody. For all that, however, he studied the most abstruse psychological problems, and I do not suppose that even Lao-Tsze himself could have made a better answer than Confucius did to the King of Lu when he asked the difficult question quoted below.
THE KING OF LU
It must be remembered that in the time of Confucius, China was divided into little kingdoms, all of which the sage, who was fond of travelling, visited in turn. When he arrived at Lu, the king, who was already an old man, received him at once, and is reported to have thus addressed him:
"I have been expecting you with impatience, for I want you to explain certain things to me about nature and man. Man, our sages tell us, is distinguished from all other visible beings by the intellectual faculty which renders him capable of reasoning, and all our wise men agree in adding that man derives this valuable faculty direct from Heaven. Now is it not true that we derive our whole nature from our parents, even as other beings are reproduced by generation? I entreat you to enlighten me on this point."