opinion by the concurring testimony of Tsai Wo, Tsze-kung, and Yu Zo, who all had wisdom, he thought, sufficient to know their master. Tsai Wo's opinion was, 'According to my view of our master, he is far superior to Yao and Shun.' Tsze-kung said, 'By viewing the ceremonial ordinances of a prince, we know the character of his government. By hearing his music, we know the character of his virtue. From the distance of a hundred ages after, I can arrange, according to their merits, the kings of those hundred ages;-- not one of them can escape me. From the birth of mankind till now, there has never been another like our master.' Yu Zo said, 'Is it only among men that it is so? There is the ch'i-lin among quadrupeds; the fung-hwang among birds; the T'ai mountain among mounds and ant-hills; and rivers and seas among rainpools. Though different in degree, they are the same in kind. So the sages among mankind are also the same in kind. But they stand out from their fellows, and rise above the level; and from the birth of mankind till now, there never has been one so complete as Confucius [1].' I will not indulge in farther illustration. The judgment of the sage's disciples, of Tsze-sze, and of Mencius, has been unchallenged by the mass of the scholars of China. Doubtless it pleases them to bow down at the shrine of the Sage, for their profession of literature is thereby glorified. A reflection of the honour done to him falls upon themselves. And the powers that be, and the multitudes of the people, fall in with the judgment. Confucius is thus, in the empire of China, the one man by whom all possible personal excellence was exemplified, and by whom all possible lessons of social virtue and political wisdom are taught.
6. The reader will be prepared by the preceding account not to expect to find any light thrown by Confucius on the great problems of the human condition and destiny. He did not speculate on the creation of things or the end of them. He was not troubled to account for the origin of man, nor did he seek to know about his hereafter. He meddled neither with physics nor metaphysics [2].
[Sidebar] Subjects on which Confucius did not treat.-- That he was unreligious, unspiritual, and open to the charge of insincerity.
The testimony of the Analects about the subjects of his teaching is the following:-- 'His frequent themes of discourse were the Book
1 Mencius, II. Pt. I. ii. 23-28.
2 'The contents of the Yi-ching, and Confucius's labors upon it, may be objected in opposition to this statement, and I must be understood to make it with come reservation. Six years ago, I spent all my leisure time for twelve months in the study of that Work, and wrote out a translation of it, but at the close I was only groping my way in darkness to lay hold of [footnote continued next page].
of Poetry, the Book of History, and the maintenance of the rules of Propriety.' 'He taught letters, ethics, devotion of soul, and truthfulness.' 'Extraordinary things; feats of strength; states of disorder; and spiritual beings, he did not like to talk about [1].'
Confucius is not to be blamed for his silence on the subjects here indicated. His ignorance of them was to a great extent his misfortune. He had not learned them. No report of them had come to him by the ear; no vision of them by the eye. And to his practical mind the toiling of thought amid uncertainties seemed worse than useless.
The question has, indeed, been raised, whether he did not make changes in the ancient creed of China [2], but I cannot believe that he did so consciously and designedly. Had his idiosyncrasy been different, we might have had expositions of the ancient views on some points, the effect of which would have been more beneficial than the indefiniteness in which they are now left, and it may be doubted so far, whether Confucius was not unfaithful to his guides. But that he suppressed or added, in order to bring in articles of belief originating with himself, is a thing not to be charged against him.
I will mention two important subjects in regard to which there is a conviction in my mind that he came short of the faith of the older sages. The first is the doctrine of God. This name is common in the Shih-ching and Shu-ching. Ti or Shang-Ti appears there as a personal being, ruling in heaven and on earth, the author of man's moral nature, the governor among the nations, by whom kings reign and princes decree justice, the rewarder of the good, and the punisher of the bad. Confucius preferred to speak of Heaven. Instances have already been given of this. Two others may be cited:-- 'He who offends against Heaven has none to whom he can pray [3]?' 'Alas! ' said he, 'there is no one that knows me.' Tsze-kung said, 'What do you mean by thus saying that no one knows you?' He replied, 'I do not murmur against Heaven. I do
[footnote continued from previous page] its scope and meaning, and up to this time I have not been able to master it so as to speak positively about it. It will come in due time, in its place, in the present Publication, and I do not think that what I here say of Confucius will require much, if any, modification.' So I wrote in 1861; and I at last accomplished a translation of the Yi, which was published in 1882, as the sixteenth volume of 'The Sacred Books of 'the East.' I should like to bring out a revision of that version, with the Chinese text, so as to make it uniform with the volumes of the Classics previously published. But as Yang Ho said to Confucius, 'The years do not wait for us.'
1 Ana. VII. xvii; xxiv; xx.
2 See Hardwick's 'Christ and other Masters,' Part iii, pp. 18, 19, with his reference in a note to a passage from Meadows's 'The Chinese and their Rebellions.'
3 Ana. III. xiii.