“Let loyalty and truth be paramount with you.”
“In mourning, it is better to be sincere than punctilious.”
“Man is born to be upright. If he be not so, and yet live, he is lucky to have escaped.”
“Riches and honours are what men desire; yet except in accordance with right these may not be enjoyed.”
Confucius undoubtedly believed in a Power, unseen and eternal, whom he vaguely addressed as Heaven: “He who has offended against Heaven has none to whom he can pray.” “I do not murmur against Heaven,” and so on. His greatest commentator, however, Chu Hsi, has explained that by “Heaven” is meant “Abstract Right,” and that interpretation is accepted by Confucianists at the present day. At the same time, Confucius strongly objected to discuss the supernatural, and suggested that our duties are towards the living rather than towards the dead.
He laid the greatest stress upon filial piety, and taught that man is absolutely pure at birth, and afterwards becomes depraved only because of his environment.
Chapter x. of the Lun Yü gives some singular details of the every-day life and habits of the Sage, calculated to provoke a smile among those with whom reverence for Confucius has not been a first principle from the cradle upwards, but received with loving gravity by the Chinese people at large. The following are extracts (Legge’s translation) from this famous chapter:—
“Confucius, in his village, looked simple and sincere, and as if he were not able to speak. When he was in the prince’s ancestral temple or in the court, he spoke minutely on every point, but cautiously.
“When he entered the palace gate, he seemed to bend his body, as if it were not sufficient to admit him.
“He ascended the daïs, holding up his robe with both his hands and his body bent; holding in his breath also, as if he dared not breathe.