§ 7. Ancient China
Of all the ancient Asiatic systems that of China yields us the first clear biographical trace of a practical rationalist, albeit a rationalist stamped somewhat by Chinese conservatism. Confucius (Kung-fu-tse = Kung the Master) is a tangible person, despite some mythic accretions, whereas Zarathustra and Buddha are at best but doubtful possibilities, and even Lao-Tsze (said to have been born 604 B.C.) is somewhat elusive.
Before Confucius (551–478 B.C.), it is evident, there had been a slackening in religious belief among the governing classes. It is claimed for the Chinese, as for so many other races, that they had anciently a “pure” monotheism;[162] but the ascription, as usual, is misleading. They saw in the expanse of heaven the “Supreme” Power, not as a result of reflection on the claims of other deities among other races, but simply as expressing their primordial tribal recognition of that special God, before contact with the God-ideas of other peoples. Monotheistic in the modern sense they could not be. Concerning them as concerning the Semites we may say that the claim of a primary monotheism for them “is also true of all primitive totemistic or clannish communities. A man is born into a community with such a divine head, and the worship of that God is the only one possible to him.”[163] Beside the belief in the Heaven-God, there stood beliefs in heavenly and earthly spirits, and in ancestors, who were worshipped with altars.[164]
The remark of Professor Legge (Religions of China, p. 11), that the relation of the names Shang-Ti = Supreme Ruler, and T’ien = the sky, “has kept the monotheistic element prominent in the religion proper of China down to the present time,” may serve to avert disputation. It may be agreed that the Chinese were anciently “monotheists” in the way in which they are at present, when they worship spirits innumerable. When, however, Professor Legge further says (p. 16) that the ancient monotheism five thousand years ago was “in danger of being corrupted” by nature worship and divination, he puts in doubt the meaning of the other expression above cited. He states several times (pp. 46, 51, 52) that the old monotheism remains; but speaks (p. 84) of the mass of the people as “cut off from the worship of God for themselves.” And see p. 91 as to ancestor-worship by the Emperor. Tiele (Outlines, p. 27) in comparison somewhat overstresses the polytheistic aspect of the Chinese religion in his opening definition; but he adds the essential facts. Dr. Legge’s remark that “the idea of revelation did not shock” the ancient Chinese (p. 13) is obscure. He is dealing with the ordinary Akkado-Babylonian astrology. Pauthier, on the contrary (Chine Moderne, 1853, p. 250), asserts that in China “no doctrine has ever been put forth as revealed.”
As regards ancestral worship, we have record of a display of disregard for it by the lords of Lû in Confucius’s time;[165] and the general attitude of Confucius himself, religious only in his adherence to old ceremonies, is incompatible with a devout environment. It has been disputed whether he makes a “skeptic denial of any relation between man and a living God”;[166] but an authority who disputes this complains that his “avoiding the personal name of Tî, or God, and only using the more indefinite term Heaven,” suggests “a coldness of temperament and intellect in the matter of religion.”[167] He was, indeed, above all things a moralist; and concerning the spirits in general he taught that “To give one’s self to the duties due to men, and, while respecting spiritual beings, to keep aloof from them, may be called wisdom.”[168] He would never express an opinion concerning the fate of souls,[169] or encourage prayer;[170] and in his redaction of the old records he seems deliberately to have eliminated mythological expressions.[171] “I would say,” writes Dr. Legge (who never forgets to be a missionary), “that he was unreligious rather than irreligious; yet, by the coldness of his temperament and intellect in this matter, his influence is unfavourable to the development of true religious feeling among the Chinese people generally, and he prepared the way for the speculations of the literati of medieval and modern times, which have exposed them to the charge of atheism.”[172]
The view that there was a very early “arrest of growth” in the Chinese religion (Menzies, History of Religion, p. 108), “before the ordinary developments of mythology and doctrine, priesthood,” etc., had “time to take place,” is untenable as to the mythology. The same writer had previously spoken (p. 107) of the Chinese system before Confucius as having “already parted with all savage and irrational elements.” That Confucius would seek to eliminate these seems likely enough, though the documentary fact is disputed.
In the elder contemporary of Confucius, Lao-Tsze (“Old Philosopher”), the founder of Taouism, may be recognized another and more remarkable early freethinker of a different stamp, in some essential respects much less conservative, and in intellectual cast markedly more original. Where Confucius was an admirer and student of antiquity, Lao-Tsze expressly put such concern aside,[173] seeking a law of life within himself, in a manner suggestive of much Indian and other Oriental thought. So far as our records go, he is the first known philosopher who denied that men could form an idea of deity, that being the infinite; and he avowedly evolved, by way of makeshift, the idea of a primordial and governing Reason (Tau), closely analogous to the Logos of later Platonism. Since the same idea is traceable in more primitive forms alike in the Babylonian and Brahmanic systems,[174] it is arguable that he may have derived it from one of these sources; but the problem is very obscure. In any case, his system is one of rationalistic pantheism.[175]
His personal relation to Confucius was that of a self-poised sage, impatient of the other’s formalism and regard to prescription and precedent. Where they compare is in their avoidance of supernaturalism, and in the sometimes singular rationality of their views of social science; in which latter respect, however, they were the recipients and transmitters of an already classic tradition.[176] Thus both had a strong bias to conservatism; and in Lao-Tsze it went the length of prescribing that the people should not be instructed.[177] Despite this, it is not going too far to say that no ancient people appears to have produced sane thinkers and scientific moralists earlier than the Chinese. The Golden Rule, repeatedly formulated by Confucius, seems to be but a condensation on his part of doctrine he found in the older classics;[178] and as against Lao-Tsze he is seen maintaining the practical form of the principle of reciprocity. The older man, like some later teachers, preached the rule of returning kindness for evil,[179] without leaving any biographical trace of such practice on his own part. Confucius, dealing with human nature as it actually is, argued that evil should be met by justice, and kindness with kindness, else the evil were as much fostered as the good.[180]
It is to be regretted that Christian writers should keep up the form of condemning Confucius (so Legge, Religions of China, p. 144; Life and Teachings of Confucius, 4th ed. p. 111 sq.; Douglas, p. 144) for a teaching the practice of which is normally possible, and is never transcended in their own Church, where the profession of returning good for evil merely constitutes one of the great hypocrisies of civilization. Dr. Legge does not scruple to resort to a bad sophism in this connection. “If,” he says, “we only do good to them that do good to us, what reward have we?” He thus insinuates that Confucius vetoed any spontaneous act of benevolence. The question is not of such acts, but of kind acts to those who seek to injure us. On the other hand, Mr. Chalmers, who dedicates his translation of Lao-Tsze to Dr. Legge, actually taunts Lao-Tsze (p. 38) with absurdity in respect of his doctrine. Such is the sincerity of orthodox polemic. How little effect the self-abnegating teaching of Lao-Tsze, in turn, has had on his followers may be gathered from their very legends concerning him (Douglas, p. 182). There is a fallacy, further, in the Christian claim that Confucius (Analects, v, 11; xv, 23) put the Golden Rule in a lower form than that of the Gospels, in that he gave it the negative form, “Do not that which ye would not have done unto you.” This is really the rational and valid form of the Rule. The positive form, unless construed in the restrictive sense, would merely prescribe a non-moral doing of favours in the hope of receiving favours in return. It appears, further, from the passage in the Analects, v, 11, that the doctrine in this form was familiar before Confucius.